Some get drunk on water. I get drunk on ugliness.

Birds, Orphans And Fools
Juraj Jakubisko 1969 Czechoslovakia
Starring: Magdaléna Vášáryová, Philippe Avron, Jiri Sykora, Mila Beran, Francoise Goldité

Juraj Jakubisko's 1969 film Birds, Orphans And Fools was almost immediately banned by the government of the time and lay dormant for twenty years, only escaping suppression in 1989. Looking at it now it's not hard to see why. Jakubisko himself kicks things off - or at least a reasonable facsimile, at first a child then two women - in his own words offering to tell us a tale about a world "good but not all good, unhappy but not really unhappy", one with a tragic ending that we can laugh at if we feel like it. His society turns church into pantomime with wounded and decomposing (but still living) children in clown suits and men who bow and curtsy in soldiers caps. The accepted rules are gone. They talk of a war that ended twenty years ago and a people afflicted with crutches that double as swords, bandages and lice. They live in the partially destroyed houses once owned by an upper class that has now been dissolved and play malevolent games in a post apocalyptic, or possibly post genocidal, setting. One man rises from a wardrobe and calls himself Lazarus while others are administered to in makeshift hospital beds. Another's nose bleeds at the first hint of excitement as if his very body is rebelling, his nerves too fraught for too long. The three lead characters, two men and a woman, represent the populace as a whole with their faces "smeared in other people's filth, like an artist's hand covered with paint". She's Jewish, one of the men claims his parents were killed by Jews. The other speaks of a famous father even though said person died fifty years previously and he's barely an adult. They laugh as they torture small animals, yawn as friends fall down dead, children who will never grow. They take endless photos to replace the images their eyes can't unsee. They freewheel and jabber, like a potent broth of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (it's no accident that one of the main men is named after Hamlet's court jester Yorick) and Jules et Jim spiked with brimstone and lacrimosa, milk and champagne. They mention a 'New Wave' and at times the screen zooms out, its images switching from colour to black-and-white and back again, both experimentative and timeless. And finally they thrive until their violent potential bursts forth, their love triangle crushed under its own weight. Jakubisco's satire is savage, at once playful and terrifying, cinematic yet truthful, tearing down the remains of a long legacy of human cruelty. I watched it hungrily and instantly wanted to watch it again. A colossal anti-war film that everyone should see but few will.