Hollywood Can’t Do Funny Anymore, but It Turns Out Czechia Can
For the set designer anyway, it’s the simplest of dramatic situations: for about an hour and a half, a dozen actors sit around a large table in a small barren room. Papers are shuffled, formalities dealt with, questions raised and discussed. Soon enough, conflicts arise. Civil debate gives way to heated argument. Anger flares. The surface comity yields to vicious personal attacks. Eventually, two of the characters almost come to blows, with one of them issuing a credible death threat.
Over the course of the story, the principals — who vary greatly in age and background and temperament — become sharply individuated. They could be described as types, although they’re far from one-dimensional. What matters is that we recognize them. They’re human, each with a distinctive set of failings, foibles, and prejudices. But life has brought them together in this room for this brief period, and somehow they have to work together to a common end.
No, I’m not talking about Twelve Angry Men, Reginald Rose’s classic 1954 TV drama turned 1955 stage play turned 1957 film about a New York jury quarreling over the verdict in a murder case. I’m talking about the Czech movie Vlastníci (Owners), which came out in Czechia in 2019 and which opens this month in New York and Los Angeles. Unlike Twelve Angry Men, it’s a comedy, and a very funny one; like Twelve Angry Men, it’s an impressive piece of work, with writer-director Jiří Havelka (who based it on his stage play Condominium) splendidly overcoming the obvious challenges posed by such a production.
Oh, one more thing: the characters here aren’t jurors. They’re members of a co-op board, holding one of their regular meetings. The meeting secretary and chair are, respectively, Mr. Zahrádka (Vojtech Kotek) and Mrs. Zahrádková (Tereza Ramba), the stressed-out parents of three small children. She’s young and pretty, and as the film begins she’s all smiles, eager to please her neighbors and smooth out any disagreements.
But her good humor is doomed to disintegrate. For she’s up against a gallery of characters guaranteed to induce, at the very least, an ulcer. Mr. Sokol (Ladislav Trojan) is a grumpy old professor of engineering who gripes that Czech democracy today is owned and operated by “white collar assholes” — “money launderers, developers, crooks” — and who keeps contrasting the present “post-revolutionary” era of rampant greed and distrust to the glorious days of Communism, when “everything was everybody’s” and “people just believed each other.” Soon enough we learn exactly why he’s so nostalgic for the old days: under Communism, as a member of the “People’s Housing Co-op,” he scammed tenants into signing their apartments over to him.
Then there’s Mrs. Roubícková (Klára Melíšková), a middle-aged Karen who’s a fanatical stickler for the bylaws and minute-keeping. Even the most trivial matters, she insists, must be voted on. But a problem soon arises: no votes can be taken without being counted by someone who’s been authorized to do so. So who counts the votes to select the vote counter?
Also on hand is Mrs. Procházková (Pavla Tomicová), a wily old broad type who has brought to the meeting one Mr. Novák (Ondřej Malý) — the 13th individual in the room — whom she introduces, vaguely enough, as her “administrator.” As the meeting proceeds and various issues are raised, this oily little creep turns out, if he is to be believed, to own a motley assortment of businesses that, miraculously enough, specialize in precisely the kind of work that the co-op needs done. “I don’t want to interrupt,” he interrupts during a discussion of water meters, “but I have a small company that installs second-hand water meters.” Later: “I’ve got a small locksmith shop.” Still later: “I’ve got a little blacksmith shop.” Then: “I’ve got this little cleaning company….”
Her neighbors have another issue with Mrs. Procházková: it turns out she’s been sharing her apartment with “at least 10” young black men. Asked about this, she claims that they’re medical students from Kenya whom she’s taken in because of her “deeply rooted Christian values.” Novák is quick to assure the neighbors that he was going to register the Kenyans properly as residents, but ran into trouble when Xeroxing their photographs, which “eat up a lot of the toner.”
Who else? Mr. Nitranský (Andrej Polák) is a Slovak gay man in his 40s. Ms. Horváthová (Dagmar Havlová), a neurotic flibbertigibbet of late middle age who, we eventually learn, has a druggie son who steals money from the neighbors. The 60-ish Mr. Svec (David Novotný) has lived with his now ailing mother his whole life, and is attending the meeting on her behalf. When Mrs. Roubícková tells him he needs his mother’s signature on a power of attorney, he takes the document and signs “Mom”; when told he can’t vote both pro and con on a proposition, he admits to finding the whole process daunting: “Mom made it look easy!”
There are new residents, too. The Bernáseks (Jiří Cerný and Marie Sawa) are nice young newlyweds who’ve just moved in and are expecting a baby any minute. The 40-ish Cermak brothers (Krystof Hádek and Stanislav Majer), who’ve just inherited their late father’s flat, are the only men to show up in jackets and ties; bringing to this ragtag little group a savvy, worldly touch, they’re smooth-talking businessmen who’ve lived in America and Russia and who keep coming up with simple solutions to problems that the others find baffling.
Alas, most of the longtime members hesitate to embrace the Cermaks’ solutions. Any deviation from the norm, it seems, brings them discomfort. When the Cermaks produce a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and propose that everyone raise a glass in their father’s memory, everyone’s ill at ease. When the Bernáseks suggest adding a few cozy touches to the courtyard — a bench, a barbecue — the others look at them as if they’ve suggested a trip to Mars.
All in all, it’s every meeting from hell you ever attended — only turned into comic gold. Passive aggressiveness abounds. The owners waste endless time electing officers to serve for the duration of the meeting. They bicker over trivial sums of money. Ms. Horváthová complains about the used diapers that the Zahrádkas throw in the trash and about the men who visit Mr. Nitranský, thereby increasing his water consumption. She also gripes that every time Mr. Nitranský walks up and down stairs, the lights come on, increasing the building’s electricity bill. “Walk faster so you don’t overstrain the lightbulbs,” she suggests. “Under socialism,” interjects Mr. Sokol nostalgically, “even the broken bulbs lit up.”
Not to brag, but this isn’t my first Czech comedy. It’s not even the first one I’ve reviewed for The American Spectator. In 1987, I wrote about My Sweet Little Village, about a truck driver and a village idiot whom I described as an “Iron-Curtain Laurel and Hardy.” The movie mocked Western values and exalted communal farming — hey, it was made under Communism — but it had its charms and some gentle laughs. Three years later, I enjoyed Čas sluhů, a dark domestic comedy about yuppies in Prague. Who’d have thought that a country bordered by the two Germanys and the USSR (as was the case then with Czechoslovakia) could produce a decent comedy?
And here we are with Owners, which is considerably better than both of those 1980s pictures. In case you missed the 2020 Czech Lion Awards, Owners received the most nominations — including seven for acting — and won for best screenplay, best actress (Ramba), and best supporting actress (Melíšková). And deservedly so: the script is top-notch, the performances terrific, the timing perfect; the combination of antipathy and affection with which these people regard one another is perfectly credible, as is the way in which Mrs. Zahrádková gradually loses her cool in the face of her neighbors’ inability to separate the trivial from the vital — even though, as she labors to explain to them, their lives may well be in danger if they don’t have the building’s utilities repaired. No, this may not be quite as great a movie as Twelve Angry Men, but it sure is funnier. If only Hollywood still made them like this!
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