Malmkrog (Cristi Puiu, 2020)

It's true, Malmkrog isn't for everyone. But I must admit to a certain surprise at the criticisms directed at it by the reviewers for Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. It's not that I expect Puiu's difficult film to be embraced by "the trades," per se. But that both reviews seemed to take the same tack, arguing that Malmkrog, by dint of its relative physical stasis and extreme discursiveness, is essentially "uncinematic," or simply "not cinema." This was back in Berlin, so we can't afford these reviewers the excuse that 2020 had been unusually hard on them. So the complaint is just baseless, a dereliction of duty. Had Manoel de Oliveira, not to mention Straub-Huillet or even Andy Warhol, never happened?

Admittedly, Malmkrog delves deep into philosophical and theological matters, rather than literary ones, and this can make it a bit tough to hang with. But I would argue that watching Malmkrog is not unlike reading Kant or Heidegger, and Puiu knows this. On first pass, you gain a basic and inevitably incomplete understanding of the stakes of the argument, and if you are so inclined, you go back and "reread" the film. Being an object in time, Malmkrog is actually uniquely suited to this sort of attentive drift, since unlike reading high philosophy, we are not permitted to go back over a dense passage over and over until we "get it." Instead, the cognitive limitations of confronting such complex material for the first time are "dramatized," as we listen in on an ongoing conversation. And joining a high-level conversation already in progress is a time-honored metaphor for picking up a book of philosophy and starting to read it.

The setting is a dinner party on Christmas Day, 1900. A small group of guests is assembled, and each takes the lead in an ongoing discussion about the nature of the modern world. And what is this conversation? What is the point of it? Vladimir Solovyov's War and Christianity: From the Russian Point of View -- Three Conversations, published in 1915, is, as the title implies, a political and theological treatise on a fundamental question. How can war be justified, if the First Commandment is "thou shalt not kill"? There are several reasons why Puiu turns to this text, and dramatizes it in the manner in which he does. But they are not necessarily obvious from the text itself as delivered by the film's characters.

The first section of Malmkrog is named for Ingrida (Diana Sakalauskaité), the wife of a general and a dedicated militarist. Her claims that an army can be Christ-like are challenged by Olga (Marina Palii), the young wife of the lord of the manor, Nikolai (Frédéric Schulz-Richard). Olga will be the foil through much of the film, as the other interlocutors find her liberal brand of Christianity to be childlike and naive. For her part, Ingrida refutes Olga's condemnation of military righteousness by reciting a letter from her husband, who describes a campaign in which they discover a Armenian village brutally slaughtered by Eastern barbarians. The Russian army is able to overtake the plunderers before they make it to the next Armenian town, and they dispatch the Eastern horde. This prevention of further barbarity is held up as an example of a righteous, Christian battle.

Puiu begins laying the groundwork for Malmkrog here, quite straightforwardly. Following from Solovyov, he provides the best possible conservative argument for war on behalf of Christendom. The "Eastern horde" are described as having roasted infants in front of their mothers, raped children, burned women alive, and generally behaving like "animals," an uncivilized mob who could not be reasoned with. It is notable that Olga makes the feeble claim that instead of making war, the Russians should have appealed to their human nature, using the power of Christ's love to awaken in the marauders a sense of decency. This liberal appeal is roundly mocked by the other discussants.

From this point on, however, Malmkrog continues along Solovyov's thinking, showing the viewer what follows if we accept Ingrida's basic conservative appeal. That is, if we accept that some people are simply Evil -- a visceral charge that is quite easy to embrace, based on empirical evidence across history -- then certain disturbing syllogisms can follow from this premise. For example, political theorist Edouard (Ugo Broussot), after arguing passionately for Russia's essential affinity for Europe as opposed to Asia ("Do we not share more with the nation of Shakespeare and Byron than with the yellow-faced Chinese?"), claims that the European is equivalent with the very concept of "man." It is the duty of the West to export the very concept of "Europe," to Europeanize the Turk, the Mongol, the "Eskimo," etc. And by extension, all efforts in Africa to attain independence as Africans must be squashed. This, too, is the duty of Christendom. 

Later on, Nikolai, further chastising Olga's reading of the Gospels, insists that absolute Evil can be summarized in Death, and that Death can only be overcome in the Resurrection. So unless one believes in the Resurrected Christ, and His return, at which point Death will be defeated once and for all, one is permitting Evil to reign. No amount of good works, preaching of the Gospels, love of one's neighbor, or any other attempt at imitating Christ, will bring one closer to the Good. If Death is final, it is absolute, and it represents the end of all ends. Only the Kingdom of God can replace it with Absolute Good.

Puiu, then, is articulating certain strands of dominant conservative thinking. For one thing, he is showing, through Solovyov, that a theology fixated on logical syllogism, rather than faith in itself, will lead one down some very dark corridors. Olga is continually depicted as naive, but her view of a benevolent Christianity, one that persuades rather than forces, one that leads with love and understanding, feels more modern, even as it is shown to be "incorrect." Meanwhile, Edouard's politics and Nikolai's strict reading of the Gospels are only a stone's throw from contemporary ethnic chauvinism and evangelical Christianity. By accepting Ingrida's principle of righteous war -- itself an underlying ideology of neoconservative "nation-building" -- we arrogate to ourselves a Godlike position to rewrite the world.

But a strange thing happens in the middle of Malmkrog. Near the end of Edouard's discussion of European culture, there is an interruption, like the muffled sound of a player piano. No one at the table knows what it is, and when Nikolai rings his bell to summon his servants, none of them appear. This goes on for some time, as the discussants become agitated and befuddled. Eventually, Nikolai goes to see what is happening, and suddenly the servants come running from the back of the house. There is a commotion, and all the dinner guests and servants (except for head butler István Téglás) are shot dead by gunfire. It seems the nascent revolution has encroached on the isolated Transylvanian manor of Malmkrog.

But then, after a brief interlude of all the figures walking in the snow in long shot, the dinner conversation starts up right where it left off. Not many reviews have mentioned this, or paid much attention to it. But it seems crucial. Puiu has staged an aristocratic dialogue about the need for strong conservative action to preserve Christian European supremacy. It takes place five years before the first Russian revolution, and is restaged in 2020, as a wave of far-right ideology sweeps the globe.

These people are dead. Their ideas have been shot full of holes. But they keep right on talking. If this bores you, you're on the right track.