The Joke

Labor Camp employment in The Joke

Jaromil Jires' The Joke, based upon the novel by Milan Kundera, is one of the more unheralded masterpieces of the Czech New Wave. Filmed as the Czech Spring evaporated, The Joker had a brief 1969 release and then was little seen for decades. It tells the tale of Ludvik, a scientist who stumbles upon a way to avenge his unjust term in a labor camp. He was betrayed and denounced by classmates for some flippant praise of Trotsky in a postcard. This misdeed lands him an all-expense paid trip to a quarry where he experiences deprivation, toil, and torture. 

These scenes are told in flashback as we follow Ludvik in the new mod Czechoslovakia of 1968. He encounters the wife of a former comrade who denounced him and concocts a plan of vengeance, He endeavors to cuckold his former classmate, Pavel, with the vain and needy Helena. As we follow his machinations, the flashbacks of his former sufferings are seamlessly woven into the narrative. The past is shown as always present in Ludvik's mind. Jires and Kundera, who collaborated closely, tell their tale solely from Ludvik's perspective. Helena, a television presenter is given short shrift as a character. A twist before the denouement changes our perspective. The film ends with Ludvik offering an admission of his own complicity and guilt.

Kundera has often been accused of misogyny, but I take this work to be an auto-critique on that score. Helena, we eventually learn, has been abandoned by Pavel for a young cookie. This makes her desperate desire for Ludvik's embrace more sympathetic. The film is steeped in ambivalence, especially in light of Kundera's possible status as a Cold War era informer. Whether he was a fink or not is irrelevant in regards to my feelings about The Joke because the work itself conjures the paranoia and cognitive dissonance of the period. Similarly, I enjoy the writings of Curzio Malaparte even though I find his morality and political stance(s) repellent. 

Like Malaparte's work, The Joke goads one out of a passive response to a work of art. By getting us to root for Ludvik's plot and then showing us its sinister underside, the film forces the viewer to question assumptions about the nature of justice and righteousness. Ludvik cannot forgive the wrongs done him and this is his fatal flaw. Jires is greatly helped by the efforts of Josef Somr as Ludvik. Somr, best known for Closely Watched Trains, displays a bulldog indefatigability akin to Walther Matthau in A New Leaf and Charley Varrick. The other characters aren't as deeply etched though Ludek Munzar oozes suave complacency as Pavel. The Joke is not an ingratiating film, but it is jarringly effective.

The opening of Full Metal Jacket, with new recruits having their head sheared upon induction into the Marine Corps, is a crib from The Joke. Many of Kubrick's boot camp shots echo the labor camp sequences of the earlier film. What is the nickname of Matthew Modine's character, but...Joker. More striking to me is the debt owed by Pawel Pawlikowski's superb film, Cold War. The Joke is a carbon for Cold War particularly in its juxtaposition of Soviet era pageantry and traditional folk music. No matter. Great writers from Homer to Shakespeare to Bob Dylan are all thieving magpies. The Joke contains much to forage. I haven't even mentioned the wonderful use of music in this film, but this, I believe is a book topic. It is interesting to me that Jires' next feature film was the surrealistic Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, a celebration of female sexuality without a hint of Cold War politics