KOLYA

 

FOUR STARS - Inspirational

 

 

       To really understand the healing forces at work during the collapse of the Soviet empire, one needs to listen to her artists.  One such artist is Jan Sverak, the director of the 1996 Academy award winner for best foreign film, “Kolya.”

       Masterfully woven in both symbolic imagery as well as personal experiences, “Kolya” is set within Czechoslovakia in 1988 when the Russian domination comes to a close.

       The film lets us experience the deep division between the secular state and the country’s religious traditions.  In its opening scene, a routine but surreal state-sponsored funeral is occurring while the words of the 23rd Psalm are being sung:  “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want....”

       The clarity of the voice and the beauty of the music implies a trust and a hope which is then jarringly interrupted by the whistle of a tea kettle whose pressure is about to burst its lid.  We realize then that the film is a feast of symbolic imagery.

       The film, both by title and design, calls our attention to the life of a young boy whose name, appropriately, is a nickname used by both the Czech and Russian people:  Kolya (Andrej Chalimon).  Representative of the film as a whole, Kolya is therefore both a symbol and a catalyst for the healing which we witness within both individuals and the nation. 

       The person for whom Kolya provides the catalyst for a personal transformation is a cynical and lonely musician named Frantisek Louka (Zdenek Sverak).

       Louka had once been a member of the Czech Philharmonic and traveled the world until he responded with a disrespectful joke to the questions of a Russian dignitary.   This, along with his brother’s defection to the West, had cost him his position.

       Now, as a virtually unemployed musician, Louka is making money  playing for funerals and renewing the lettering on old tombstones.

         It is obvious that Louka’s personal plight represents the plight of all of Czechoslovakia.   Its music and soul has been imprisoned behind Russian walls, and all that is left to do is to die and mark the place of their dead.

       But the transformation begins.  Into Louka’s life comes a little boy named Kolya.

       At first, he seems a minor character in the world of adult machinations.  His mother, a Russian woman of wealth, wants to procure Czech citizenship papers.  To do so she enters into an arranged loveless marriage with Louka.

       When the marriage is official, his wife only uses the papers to defect to the west herself.  This, too, is a symbol of the Czech experience of the Russian exploitation of its people.

       Having left Kolya in the care of her aunt who subsequently becomes very ill, the boy is sent to stay with his “new father”.  Neither wants the other.

       But that is the point of the film.  Kolya is both the victim of the dying totalitarian regime, and the catalyst for hope in his “new father’s” future. 

       Played with alluring charm, Kolya begins to win the heart of Louka. Louka can’t help but be touched by the innocent love of this Russian child, despite his resentment against the Soviet occupation. 

       Louka experiences for the first time the transforming power of love in his own life.  This is a vast contrast to his own lifestyle of using others for his own pleasure in uncommitted liaisons.

       This message becomes even clearer to Louka through the presence of the singer of the 23rd Psalm from the opening funeral scene of the film.  A lonely widow whose love for Louka has only been used for his own pleasure, she now participates in his care of Kolya and witnesses the growth of Louka’s ability to love another.

       The film closes with the Soviet dominance coming to an end and east and west being opened to one another again.  The freedom of this transformation causes the reuniting of Kolya with his mother. 

       This temporary transfusion of a little boy into Louka’s life has transformed his heart.  And for Kolya, he too has been transformed.  God’s care over the lives of individuals and nations is present even in our darkest moments.

       As he flies away into his new life in the west, little Kolya sings to himself the words he heard in his temporary home:  “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want....”