There are so many ways for a film like the “Broken Voices” of the writer / director Ondrej Provaznik to be mistaken. On the basis of the infamous case of Bambini Di Praga real in which a Czech choir director was found guilty of having sexually abused nearly two dozen young girls, it is a largely disturbing exploration of the way in which an acclaimed choir becomes a place of general child abuse.
The film, which was created on Sunday at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, tells an essential story and must walk on a very fine line between authentically capturing the reality of horrible situations like this while not falling into exploitation or, perhaps even worse, transforming what happened into something exceptional.
What makes the film of Promaznik the most effective, beyond the simple care he shows to his young characters and the way he maintains their humanity in the foreground, is the fact that his story, whatever his concern, is also frightening. The context is specific and detailed, but the game book is alarming in the way the abuses do not come from random foreigners supposed to hide in the shadows, but the people who are known to all around them.
It is a simple and devastating truth that the film is confronted with the front, creating a constant pit in the stomach, because imminent abuses feel both completely preventable and, conversely, tragically inevitable when no one can trust it to take care of children. In this regard, he has the impression that the fantastic film by Damien Chazelle in 2014 “Whiplash” was crossed with “The Assistant” by Kitty Green. Although fortunately not as visceral as the first and unfortunately never as nuanced as the second, “Broken Voices” is always a reflected portrait which is found somewhere between the two. It is delicate in certain moments but devastating in others, doing justice to a true story.
The film begins in the 1990s with the young Karolina (Kateřina Falbrová) while she sneaks into a rehearsal to see her sister Lucie (Maya Kintera) sing as part of the Bambini world renowned Czech choir Di Praga. While we gently immerse ourselves in their dynamics of the brothers and sisters, defined both by love for others and occasional jealousy, we also start to have glimpses of the choir and the community that feels taken in its orbit.
The group, led by Chomirmaster saw Macha (Juraj Loj), is depicted several times as a point of pride for adults. The way everyone is in love with the prospect that his child is part of the travel choir, the next tour is in the United States, only makes more sincerely painful to see how no one seems to think of the children themselves. When Karolina is invited to be part of the main choir, then goes to a rehearsal retirement at a long -term distance with the rest of the group, the alarm ringtones that were already triggered in the back of your mind become stronger.
Above all, Promaznik never survives his hand in the exploration of this dynamic, leaving powerful small details pointed out to accumulate until everything collapses. The quietest annihilate time occurs early when we learn how Karolina and Lucie are warned not to take a so-called dangerous path through the woods to their house. This is something to which the film returns several times, both because it is a moment when the two girls (of course following the path anyway) experience joy together and also to create a juxtaposition with the most urgent threat that exists in their world.
This threat is not the one they have been warned; Instead, he has just smiled and promise how tall girls are. He won their parents who are also attentive, which makes him even more pernicious.
There are so many signs apparently ignored by adults who should have noticed them, the most worrying involving a jacket left in a room. This is precisely the point: people see what they want to see. They really compare themselves the details concerning the details because it comes from someone close, choosing to be on guard against threats that are easier to swallow, more abstract instead.
All this makes “broken voices” a delicate and overwhelming indictment act in the way the abuse consumes not only the group of choirs in this case, but any community. It is one of these incisive films and more focused on sociology that end up being described as a long -term calculation for everything it turns. However, although it certainly deserves this praise and greatly benefits from a first performance in Falbrová, the most critical truth is that it reveals how it can happen anywhere when people look in the other direction.
Even if we have an overview of the compassion of one of the colleagues member of Karolina in an offer to hold the hand, which ends up informing the upset final framework of the film, the tragedy has just known that this is not enough. Adults supposed in the room only listen to beautiful music and not overwhelming pain below.
