The Cremator (1969) is a film of immense depth and gives the greatest experience of life. This is one such rare film in history that can be truly described as “much ahead of its time”.
The cinematography is simply indescribable. This film’s most memorable male character in the Czech New Wave. It cannot be said that this film is noir film for it has redefined the very meaning of noir. It offers a neo-noir ambience. Director Juraj Herz was a survivor of Ravensbrück concentration camp and it can be seen how that personal experience gave him bold proprietary permission to mock and explore this horrifying subject to great effect. In a word, this film has a hypnotic direction.
The Cremator is darkly comic, absurdly disturbing headspace of a compulsive, obsessive cremator who views his craft as an art, which gradually morphs into a tool for the genocidal Nazi machine. The effect of the absurd disturbance can be felt through its terrifying score.
The leading performance of our hero deserves to be held as one of the best in cinema history. The Cremator is an unapologetic delusional madness of a man that strongly believes in the purifying power of cremation and the metaphysical advantages provided by premature death to stop human suffering. This madness makes him think that he is the next Buddha and his sole occupation is of “liberating” souls from their bodies.
The presence of this mad intellectual man is so imposing, that the rest of the characters around him seem like defenceless puppets. His physiognomy correlates in a shocking way with his indecipherable intentions. The scenarios, paintings and architecture dance around his macabre deeds and communicate ominous statements waiting to be revealed. His whole fictional trademark personality precedes an important number of antagonists in the history of world cinema.
There is also a tremendous political subtext as the German troops have arrived to the Czech border. With his friend’s advice, he began considering the importance of his possible German heritage and the issue of his partial Jewish life. This was the volatile component in the cremator’s mentality to unleash a paranoiac divine mission that pushes him to execute a permanent task during his stay on earth while proclaiming the upcoming new order that was about to be established by the Führer. This is extremely original and quite horrifying.
In editing, the film uses landscapes, mansions, horror stories told with wax figures, images of suffering and in-house locations to conduct an unprecedented operatic nightmare of unspeakable psychological proportions. The status of this film is of the highest quality among international cinema, of any decade, of any place. The movie is so layered, intricate and controlled that a rewatch is almost mandatory to fully submerge in its bleak, vast thesis.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
