Cremator (1969)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

Cremator (1969) – J. Herz

This Czech New Wave film is definitely weird, although perhaps not quite as weird as I was expecting (I didn’t expect a character study).  Rudolf Hrusínský plays the title character, a family man who proudly works at the local crematorium, setting souls free from their worries (as inspired by a book about the Dalai Lama).  However, the film is set in the 1930s and soon Kopfrkingl the Cremator is being encouraged by an old friend, and now Fascist with Nazi sympathies, to think about the purity of races and using his crematorium for cleansing in the Holocaust sense.  So, yeah, it’s dark and often discussed as a horror film.  But Kopfrkingl is seemingly not an evil guy – he’s avuncular and pretty much a dupe who is willing to change his behaviour to be part of the in-crowd (evil is banal, then).  Somehow director Juraj Herz manages to connect this will to power with sexual desire, implying that Kopfrkingl’s motives are anything but clear.  Add to this his morbid obsession with death and disease and it’s positively psychodynamic.  Where the film is definitely weird is that we can’t always be sure whether what we see is reality or Kopfrkingl’s fantasies/dreams/fears.  There are a lot of really strange scenes and shots in beautiful B&W (and impossible edits between them) – which makes the film impressive despite its content matter, which to be honest grows darker and darker as it goes along.  At the same time, it is impossible to escape the feeling that much of what is happening could be very very black comedy.  Wow.