Malmkrog movie review (2021) | Little White Lies

Malmkrog

25 Mar 2021 / Released: 25 Mar 2021

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Cristi Puiu

Starring Agathe Bosch, Edith Alibec, and Vitalie Bichir

Two people in period costumes looking out of a window onto a snowy landscape.
Two people in period costumes looking out of a window onto a snowy landscape.
4

Anticipation.

Almost all the reviews from its Berlin premiere contained variations on the word ‘boring’.

5

Enjoyment.

Entrancing from minute one. Stripped back and, in its own way, completely unique.

5

In Retrospect.

There’s something nourishing about the film that makes you want to go straight back for more.

Cristi Puiu takes view­ers on an intel­lec­tu­al odyssey with this stripped-back peri­od dra­ma set in a Tran­syl­van­ian mansion.

To encounter Cristi Puiu’s 200-minute, point­ed­ly phleg­mat­ic philo­soph­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion piece, Malmkrog, is to embark on a voy­age of dizzy­ing intel­lec­tu­al discovery.

Five pompous ass­es, each of vary­ing ide­o­log­i­cal per­sua­sions, hole up in a pas­tel-walled Tran­syl­van­ian manor house cir­ca 1900 and engage in gen­teel back-and-forth pat­ter on sub­jects rang­ing from the moral­i­ty of war, the val­ue of cul­ture, the mechan­ics of colo­nial­ism and, final­ly, the pres­ence of a divine fig­ure who can sweet­en the bit­ter pill of death.

The dia­logue is deliv­ered in a cal­cu­lat­ed monot­o­ne, and none of the atten­dees attempt to wreath their exchanges in high emo­tion lest it under­mine the solem­ni­ty of their intent. This tamped-down approach helps to sus­tain a cut-glass inten­si­ty across the run­time, as well as forc­ing the view­er to mine for tiny inflec­tions or ges­tures that might uncov­er any under­ly­ing resentments.

Puiu offers a guid­ing hand via his care­ful com­po­si­tions, pur­pose­ful edits and ele­gant block­ing of the actors, but he only accom­pa­nies us to a point. Some may find all of this point­less, or death­ly dull, but if you’re will­ing to ful­ly engage with what the film is doing – i.e., accept it as more than a deliv­ery sys­tem for dia­logue – then an enter­tain­ing his­to­ry of mod­ern thought will be your reward. In the back­ground, ser­vants deliv­er refresh­ments, and in one amus­ing inter­lude, a small child is dragged from the room and back upstairs.

The text is based on a 1915 trea­tise by Russ­ian philoso­pher Vladimir Solovy­ov called War and Chris­tian­i­ty’, though its roots in archa­ic lit­er­a­ture don’t pre­vent the film from engag­ing with con­tem­po­rary mores, specif­i­cal­ly its soft­ly-spo­ken cel­e­bra­tion of a mode of dis­course which rejects hys­te­ria and violence.

There’s the occa­sion­al dig and the odd under­hand barb, but in the main its fer­vent ded­i­ca­tion to high seri­ous­ness lends it an atmos­phere of droll tragedy. If any of the above sets bells ring­ing, then we can’t rec­om­mend this high­ly enough.

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