Teorie tygra

I was bracing myself for the worst, but if for no other reason than the high ratings I thought it would at least be technically competent. I was expecting, for example, that the editing would follow the camera angles, that the camera could do more than cut between medium close-ups and long shots with the occasional nonsensical tracking or crane shot. I thought they were able to space out objects in the frame nowadays so that it didn't look like someone had just quickly piled up new, clean, freshly purchased props into a sterile room. That someone will realize if I have a scene in which a character happens to walk from one room to another, it looks silly if her police file is sitting right there in the middle of the table on a tidy clipboard so that it's right at hand. I can't imagine how Baigar could announce that this would be the fortieth scene in which the characters would be sitting at the table eating, because he's unable to think of any other situation in which they might interact, without somebody saying something. But that laziness, resignation, and tiredness of the form is quite consistent with the overall premise, in which Bartoška plays a poor man so cowardly that, for forty years of marriage, he is unable to tell his wife he doesn't want to be with her and instead starts taking secret trips to the countryside to drink wine, smoke, and look off into the distance. When the dreamy question of why the fuck doesn't he divorce her then comes up, he expertly blows it off by saying that she wouldn't survive. And voila – they end up divorcing anyway, and his wife survives it quite well. Still, the film makes Bartoška out to be an anti-system rebel and avatar of freedom who is a role model for his crippled relatives. Of course, to make sure we understand this sufficiently, it is presented that the old bearded vet is still the object of interest for the young sexy single women he shakily rejects before heading off on his way once again into the sunset. The wimpy characters of his relatives then undergo a transformation in his presence, accentuated by the physical assault of Novotny's psychopathic wife, which the film sees as an understandable escalation as a result of her terror, which she had asked for and which her poor husband could do nothing about up until then. Still, The Tiger Theory does not defend itself by presenting sympathetic female characters who contrast with the harpy caricatures of Balzerová, Janžurová, and Vilhelmová, and thus keeping the film from being misogynistic. Indeed, it wraps its entire plot in a paraphrase of neutering cats, which the protagonist, as a veterinarian, is forced to perform at the beginning with resentment and refuses at the end out of conviction. Moreover, its depiction of women and men only grotesquely reinforces the oldest and dumbest stereotypes, in which all of us men wage war against the women who want to tame and domesticate us from their kitchens full of red wine and sandwich-making. The high ratings and attendance of this cinematic miscarriage only speaks to the overall sniveling and cowardice of society that it allows us to identify with this piece so much that we overlook how disgusting it looks and fails to work plot-wise. Not to mention that there's not a trace of humor in the film, and yet the whole thing tries to look like a Czech Fight Club, with Jan Muchow and Michal Tučný instead of the Dust Brothers strumming along with a tough guy revolution. (24.09.2016) (mniej) (więcej)