BD 83 The Barnabáš Kos Case

[What A Disgrace]

Peter Solan's 1965 film is coming to Blu-ray in March, per Second Run's website.

[MichaelB]

A wonderful film. I wrote it up a few years ago:

The Barnabáš Kos Case (Prípad Barnabáš Kos, 1964)

Barnabáš Kos (Josef Kemr) is the triangle player in a reasonably prestigious orchestra, a job so musically insignificant that his fellow percussionists can easily step into the breach should Kos not be present at the vital moment. And one of the reasons he may legitimately not be present is that because he has more spare time than his colleagues (his practice routine being slightly less demanding than that of, say, a violinist), he's the one who gets nominated as an representative of the orchestra on all sorts of official panels that are a seemingly inevitable by-product of working in communist Czechoslovakia (although it's not remotely hard to transplant this to the subsidised arts sector in the UK or indeed anywhere else). So he's popular with the orchestra because he does the boring jobs that they're not interested in, and similarly popular with the authorities because, while Kos is punctilious about attending the various meetings, he never says or does anything controversial. If you can imagine a union rep who's the polar opposite of the late Bob Crow, Barnabáš Kos would be him.

And so when the position of overall director of the orchestra unexpectedly becomes vacant, the officials think that they have a perfect candidate - and one whose installation will permit them far greater control over the day-to-day operations. Because if Kos hasn't rocked the boat even the slightest bit up to now, there's no reason to assume that he'll be any different in this job, is there?

Their major miscalculation, though, is that for the first time Kos has been given a position of real power - and he resolves to use it in order to redress what he perceives as a grievous historical wrong. This starts off subtly, by programming only pieces that already include a triangle part, but then Kos proposes adding additional triangle accompaniment to existing works. Then, in the guise of progressive thinking and challenging reactionary convention, he changes the layout of the orchestra, with the percussion section moved from the back to the front - I'm sure it's just a coincidence that this puts the triangle player slap bang in the middle. And when the time comes to commission a new work from one of the leading composers of the day, what could be more truly groundbreaking than the first ever concerto for triangle? Surely no-one would have a problem with that?

And if they do... well, Kos is the director of the orchestra, with the power to summarily fire anyone who ill-advisedly puts their career on the line by denouncing all this as megalomaniacal bollocks by a man promoted way ahead of his actual competence. And while the officials who appointed him swiftly realise that they've made a dreadful mistake, they can't do anything about it because any such admission would turn the spotlight onto their own poor judgement, thus putting their own careers and reputations at risk - so instead they double down and back him all the way, defending even his loopiest conceit (for instance, commandeering an entire steelworks to produce the perfect triangle, rejecting dozens of attempts along the way) as being symptomatic of the most laudably radical thinking of a kind that makes other orchestras seem hopelessly hidebound. But neither they nor Kos have any control over the public verdict, and sooner or later their reaction will become impossible to ignore...

Perhaps not surprisingly, The Barnabáš Kos Case took something like seven years to go into production, as the script had to run a gauntlet of Slovak film-industry officials who were convinced that the project was a personal attack on them - although in the event the finished film was remarkably uncontroversial, perhaps because its satirical targets were so universal. Let's face it, if you look at pretty much any government anywhere in the world (and at any time), or the management of any institution of any kind, you're all but certain to find a Barnabáš Kos somewhere on the roster - someone who blatantly owes their elevation to something other than merit. (The former British Cabinet minister Chris Grayling would appear to be a classic example.) The situation posited by the film may be absurd, but there are plenty of real-life equivalents where the changes instituted by the new boss are a fair bit subtler, but ultimately just as insidious and indeed personally self-serving.

Peter Solan is widely regarded as one of the best Slovak directors, although he's largely unknown outside Slovakia's borders (even in the Czech Republic, he rarely seems to be namechecked). Although on the evidence of this and his eye-catching concentration camp drama The Boxer and Death (Boxer a smrť, 1962), it's very much our loss: what struck me most about both those films is the sheer confidence with which Solan handles potentially tricky material - in the case of Barnabáš Kos, via a strikingly geometric approach to set design and composition, with triangles understandably well to the fore, although never in an off-puttingly self-conscious way: Solan is clearly well aware that the script and performances are more than strong enough not to need distracting window-dressing.

[What A Disgrace]

Due out March 17, specs:

• The Barnabáš Kos Case (Prípad Barnabáš Kos, 1964) presented from a 2K restoration by the Slovak Film Institute.
• The Invincibility of Absurdity: An introduction to the film by Rastislav Steranka, Director of National Cinematographic Centre, Slovak Film Institute.
• Promotion (Postup, 1968): A short animated film by Viktor Kubal.
• Portrait: Jarmila Košťová (1969): A short film on the famous Slovak actor.
• Booklet with new writing on the film by author Jonathan Owen and filmmaker Peter Strickland.
• New English subtitle translation.
• UK premiere on Blu-ray.
• Region free Blu-ray (A/B/C).

[MichaelB]

This would make a great double bill with Krzysztof Zanussi's Camouflage, another film about Machiavellian manipulation behind the scenes of a cultural institution whose basic situation could be transplanted to a vast number of other situations in plenty of other countries.

[ryannichols7]

the booklet is confirmed at 36 pages, and this disc now includes:

Nemecká (1974): Peter Solan's powerful documentary short, with original music by Zdeněk Liška.

which has a whopping 16 views on Letterboxd, with not even a runtime listed. IMDb doesn't even list it at all. can't wait!

[Bikey]

Full details now at our website

[Bikey]

"This is a fabulous HD presentation with fine grain and impressive crispness."
Beaver review