The Ear
Directed by KAREL KACHYNA
Starring JIRINA BOHDALOVÁ RADOSLAV BRZOBOHATÝ GUSTAV OPOCENSKÝ
1970
OUT NOW
Blu-ray
If there’s one thing we’ve learned that the communist party really don’t care for, it’s. We are introduced to married, middle aged couple Ludvík (Radoslav Brzobohatý) and Anna (Jiřina Bohdalová) whose relationship has hit the stretch where there is no humiliation felt as keenly as drunkenly urinating on the pavement. The pair break into a house by candlelight, which turns out to be their own, and trade scabrous insults, their words dredging up years of suffering and neglect. Yet Ludvík has something else on his mind – working as a bureaucrat for the boys’ club that is the Prague Communist Party, he has picked up a number of tell-tale signs that he’s going to be next in line to be violently swept under the rug. The action abruptly switches back and forth between a cocktail party fuelled by party gossip and scenes of the unhappy couple screaming blue murder while he engages in a bout of early hours document burning, singeing the toilet seat in the process.
