Juraj Jakubisko - Sedim na konari a je mi dobre AKA Sitting on a Branch, Enjoying Myself (1989)

Twenty years after Birds, Orphans & Madmen, Jakubisko essentially reworked the same material into a wonderful narrative about ordinary people surviving within the sea of Eastern European history. But here the gratuitous ugliness of the earlier film is replaced by a fable-like wonder and deep affection for the characters. Two men fight to make a life for themselves – and eventually for the damaged woman they come to love – as the devastation of WWII is replaced by the oppression of communism. The mix of humour, romance and tragedy is reminiscent of Kusturica.





Al final de la guerra, dos hombres juntan sus destinos para sonsacar a un grupo de nazis el paradero de un tesoro procedente de sus víctimas. Pepe y Prengel, cómico de circo y soldado respectivamente, deciden, a su vuelta de la guerra, unirse para intentar salir adelante en esa época de caos y destrucción. Para conseguirlo ponen en marcha una antigua panadería abandonada. Aparecerá entonces en escena una muchacha joven, de frágil belleza, de la que ambos se enamoran. Ella guarda largo silencio encaramada a la rama de un nogal.





Unintentional allegory

What is interesting about Sedim na konari a je mi dobre is not the story it tells about Czechoslovakia in the post-war era, but the story it tells about post-1989 Slovakia. When in the film the Communists take part in the 1948 elections Pepe and Prengel are eager to lend a hand in the election campaign. Being firm believers in social justice, they of course are glad to support the Communists and thus drive around in a converted armoured vehicle with a gingerbread bust of Stalin perched on top and offer free gingerbread hearts to everyone.

It would surely be easy to fall for their promise that one day, everything will belong to everyone and soon it will be wine or even champagne they are giving away for free, not gingerbread. Such exuberance can only be explained as a naive fantasy, reacting to the bitter bleakness of the tragic years of war. Desperation leads them to seek out radical solutions and their optimism is so unfounded that they can only be disappointed. Eventually they find that they can only be happy when completely removed from politics and society, either in the secluded bakery in the woods or high up on a branch, where as the smug and complacent title of the film suggests, they are fine.

Bearing in mind the film was made in 1989, we can draw some interesting observations about the future of Slovak politics at that time and the prevailing political attitudes. Whilst Pepe and Prengel offered wine and champagne, 1989 offered MTV, Coca Cola and McDonalds. Can we really say the later was any more realistic than the former? Prices in Slovakia have skyrocketed while wages have for all but a small entrepreneurial class remained more or less static.

Surveys are increasingly showing, and not just in Slovakia, that the Communist era is looked back on with a degree of nostalgia, and many people perceive that they were better off in that period. Many Slovaks now complain about the price of milk, nevermind the cost of a BigMac and fries. Doubtless their disappointment is a not so different from those who believed Stalinism would pull Czechoslovakia out from the rubble of the Second World War. - Andrew James Horton.