Finnish film-maker Klaus Haro’s Estonian/Russian language movie “The Fencer” (2015) [Finland’s entry for Foreign Language Oscars) could be easily understood without the English subtitles. It’s not that this is a movie that relays its themes through sequences of stupendous imagery; it is just the kind of film that employs familiar tropes which you might have seen in at least dozens of Hollywood movies. “The Fencer” is box-ticking in various ways: Did this have a handsome protagonist in a state of quandary? Yes. Does this film have a beautiful actress who only serves as hero’s romantic interest? Yes. Is there a cute kid in the narrative, who sees our hero as a father figure? Yes. Does the script include a despicable sycophant, who is intent in maintaining the status quo? Oh yes! Despite such fairly predictable and little annoying plot structure, there is something positively infectious about watching an ‘inspirational’ drama, where world-weary, but wide-eyed kids eagerly wait to learn a path of virtue from the grown-ups. That is what made me to forget that “The Fencer” is an Oscar entry movie from a country that makes profoundly-layered films and also to forgive its conventional script (only to an extent).
The film is partly based on the plight of champion fencer
Mr. Ender Nelis. He was drafted by Nazi Germany during its occupation of
Estonia in World War II. When Soviet Union boasted its power on Estonia after
1945, Ender had to run into a small town in the Baltic region, where the
inquisitive eyes of KGB might not reach. The fact that the film’s protagonist
is a man ‘on-the-run’ is established in the opening shot as Ender Nelis (Mart Avandi) is followed by the camera, while walking through a bedraggled
Soviet-Union controlled Estonian town named Haapsalu. It is early 1952 and Ender ends up taking the jobs
as sports teacher in a school, where the meager sport equipment are often
shared with military facilities. Nelis couldn’t stand the propaganda recitals
of head-teacher (Hendrik Toompore) and also isn’t good in handling children.
A cute and curious little girl Marta (Liisa Koppel) and a
sulky teenager Jaan (Joonas Koff), who lives with his grandfather (played by “Tangerines”
fame Lembit Ulfsak) changes our protagonist’s constricted attitude. And, of
course there’s an attractive, fellow teacher Kadri (Ursula Ratasepp) who
provides ample motivation for Nelis. Despite the tyrannical head-masters’
warning that fencing is an elitist and anti-socialist sport, Nelis includes
fencing courses in his sports club. The eager kids, in order to be liberated
from the gloomy life (most of the kids have lost their father or both parents
to the war), embrace Nelis’ fencing classes. Due to the lack of equipment, the
students simply use sticks. As the head-master begins digging into Nelis’s
shadowy past, the school’s fencing team gets an opportunity to participate in a national
competition, held at Leningrad, which for Nelis would be like voluntarily
entering into ‘Lion’s den’.
As I mentioned, the script (written by Anna Heinamaa) moves
with little surprises and settles on a conventional formula, although it hits
the right notes from a simple, emotional front. The children Jaan and Marta
makes up for the movie's emotional core and the kids’ lucid performances
attracts our attention. The drab palette used to denote the broken-down Soviet
society provides enough atmospheric help to root for the underdogs’ battle. The
final sports sequences at first looks like a boiled-down version of “Karate Kid”, even though it’s captured better by avoiding faux, chest-thumping emotions. The final
sequence also pits Marta against a big & skilled city boy, which is an
obvious metaphor for Endel Nelis’ struggle against the intimidating
bureaucratic machine. Apart from the predictability factor, the one galling
phenomenon about the film is that we never get to know about Mr. Nelis’ and his
motivations. He is heroic and says the usual words like “I have been running
all my life”. Avandi, who plays Nelis looks and perfectly plays the part, but what
makes this fencing club founders’ life different from the usual taciturn-loner-turned-inspirational-figure?
“The Fencer” (95 minutes) is a well-crafted, fairly
entertaining, but a very predictable ‘David-Goliath’ drama. It will be
remembered as the film that made into short-list of 2016 Golden Globe
nominations and long-list of Oscar nominations and apart from that it has nothing unique to remember.
Trailer
1 comment:
That is a rather intriguing movie about a cute protagonist with a saber. I might watch it soon, thanks to your fine review.
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