First of all, it should be emphasized that the following text only refers to the work of art “Sparta”. On the allegations against Ulrich Seidl and the production in the course of research by the weekly magazine “The mirror” as well as the “Falters“ have arisen, be referred. They report about questionable working methods and the concealment of the actual topic (pedophilia) from the parents of the child actors. These allegations are taken seriously, but should not play any role in the following text or in the assessment of the artistic performance.
When a man in his forties goes alone to a children’s playground, joins the children, talks to them, touches them, becomes thoughtful, drives home, struggles indecisively with feelings that are new and unexpected, not knowing how to deal with them , believes he can master them by giving them limited scope, it won’t be that bad, they overpower him, the situation gets out of control, others get wind of the matter, the man finally stands before the ruins of his existence , then these lines summarize the real dilemma underlying the plot of Ulrich Seidl’s new film. In the “brother play” to his film “Rimini”, which was released last year, the filmmaker follows someone who left Austria, namely to Romania to start anew there. He may not know exactly what this refers to, his name is Ewald, he is played by Georg Friedrich. Ewald works in a factory and is in a relationship that doesn’t work. He no longer gets aroused, not since he was watching some kids play and he suddenly saw an unexpected side in him. Ewald tends towards pedophilia, he is ill, just like all pedophiles are ill at first. While he keeps his own inclination in check in subtly written, staged and acted scenes, sneaking around the run-down scenery of the Romanian countryside and villages to see how it develops, resistance crumbles and a worrying desire to experiment awakens. Ewald opens a kind of judo camp in a former school. There he trains, or so he pretends, the children of the nearby village in judo, including building a wall together to protect the area from prying eyes. Ewald builds a modern Sparta for himself and the children, hence the title of the film. Shielded from the outside world, he makes friends with the children who don’t speak his language and he only speaks a fragment of theirs. He lets the kids strip down to their underpants, pose in front of their cell phone cameras and flex their muscles. In the evening he scrolls through the photos and confirms his suspicions.
Ulrich Seidl is really not known for cheerfulness. In his new film, the director once again shows a setting that seems extremely depressing, but in which people are at home who are staged in a completely realistic, almost documentary way. Filmed mostly in distorted wide-angle images, “Sparta” tells a deeply human story, about morally reprehensible aspects of being human, but those that are not taboo, not stigmatized. Seidl does not condemn his protagonist, just as little as he protects him. The distanced perspective protects the film from trivializing pedophilia as well as from demonizing the disease. We see Ewald at a critical point in his life, a turning point if you will, from where he steers into the unknown. The cool nature of Seidl’s directing style fits like a glove, it hurts to watch, “Sparta” is, unsurprisingly, a highly unpleasant film. But it also shows that looking is important. It takes far too long for other adults to look within the plot. They prefer to look away from the children and the people around them. They much prefer to assert their own interests when they look at the children, just as an alcoholic father calls his son effeminate and, for the sake of masculinity, has him kill a rabbit. He overlooks the more than visible pedophile gestures of the judo teacher. When a rut sets in at the end of the film, Seidl leaves his audience with a sinking feeling. Nothing will change if we look the other way and don’t come to the rescue of those affected by pedophilia.
2023-06-04 07:08:58
#warriors #Sparta
