To see the Sea (男孩子自導日記)

One doesn't get a lot of chance to see any films from Czechoslovakia, which split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Previously most of the films from that country are about its recent turbulent past: occupation by Nazi Germany, life under Communist rule etc. But its entry in this year's European Union Film Festival HK 2015 is a most unusual film: Pojedeme k moři ( To See the Sea), a film by 28-year-old actor turned director Jiří Mádl, who took a 6--month crash course on film making at the New York Film Academy just before making the film, shot with a Nikon digital SLR, purportedly from the point of view of one of its two protagonists, Tomáš Hrobský( Petr Simcák ), an 11-year-old school boy who boldly declared with typical childish bravado that he wanted to become the next Miloš Forman and his buddy Haris Kubálek  (Jan Marsál ). Tomáš got the camera as a birthday present from his internet furniture dealer father (táta) (Ondrej Vetchý) and he started first with the idea of making a film on a subject with which he thought he is most familiar and closest to him viz. his own family in the southern Bohemian city of České Budějovice and then as the film develops, it spills off into episodes about the family of his best friend Haris, an immigrant from nearby Croatia. .

Tomáš was intrigued by one fact: recorded by his secretly hidden camera trained on his father before the computer on his work desk:  every Tuesday and Thursday morning, he would suddenly stop work and start talking secretly to someone on the telephone shortly after which he would leave the house and drive off to some unknown destination. Tomáš suspected his father of having an affair with another woman. But when he asked his father about it, his father would strenuously deny that he had ever left the house and when he asked his mother (máma) (Lucie Trmíková) if she noticed if she found anything unusual about the behavior of his father, she would look very puzzled at his question and would deny any such suggestion.

All the signs and clips from Tomáš' hidden camera, including some shots about their bedroom behavior, pointed to the fact that his mother and his father were still very much in love with each other. But why all the secrecy about his father's mysterious departure from the house every Tuesday and Thursday morning? To test his theory, he asked his mother if she wanted to have another baby with his father but she told him she would not. Tomáš was determined to find out. One day, he and Haris made a big decision: both of them would play truant and would follow Tomáš' father around in a taxi on the next Thursday morning, with money stolen from Haris' father's secret cash box. What he found astounded him: his father's car stopped at the Occupational Therapy Centre where Tomáš' mother was working and when he met her, he would kiss her and then both of them would disappear inside. This puzzled him even further. Finally Tomáš' plucked up sufficient courage to confront his father the second time he saw him there. His father and then his mother led him to a room at the centre and presented him with the truth: Tomáš, an adopted son, has an elder paraplegic  half-brother (Jan Hlavác), the natural son of his parents. But this is not how the film ended. The last shot was that of Haris, on a beach back in Croatia, from whence they came, because his mother (Michaela Majerníková) and he had decided that they have had enough of Haris wife-beating father. Haris renewed his promise to Tomáš that  he could come visit him whenever he liked and he would take him to "see the sea", jumping up and making their habitual hand signal of their unbreakble bond of undying friendship.

It's a simple film and a clever idea. There are various very endearing shots of innocent childish behavior and some not so endearing scenes of adult violence: the phantasy "wedding" between the two buddies, all respectively dressed up in real wedding gown and suit;  how Tomáš invited his dream girl, his classmate Stána (Anastázie Chocholatá) out and how she told him that she really fancied Haris (!) and how the two boys then decided that neither of them would see the girl any more because they would not allow the girl to stand between them; how Tomáš hated football which his father made him play and finally told his father he would stop playing; how one of them filmed the other pooping; and the brutish behavior of first their football coach ( Roman Nevecný) and then the brutality of Haris' father (Ondrej Veselý); how Haris would cover up the fact he was beaten up by his father by lying to Tomáš 's favorite grandmother that he sustained the bruise on his face on the football field; how he dressed the wound on grandma's toe upon learning of her injury; the child-like decision of the taxi driver (Miroslav Táborský) who took Tomáš and Haris on their spying trail upon Tomáš' father to let them have the ride free of charge when it was time to pay their taxi fare because apparently he got as much fun and excitement as they did in the real spy chase and finally various shots of Tomáš and Haris doing their childish antics before the camera. It's clever of Jiří Mádl to adopt a detective story format to keep the suspense going until the very end and to attribute any fault in his camera work to the fact that it was supposed to be shot by two kids and to introduce some innocent childish fun to relieve the suspense. It's said that what gave Jiří Mádl the idea of the story is Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, about how a 15-year-old autistic British boy  investigated the mysterious death of his neighbor's dog. Whatever the truth may be, I'm quite sure that Jiří Mádl probably does not have to worry much now where he'll get finance for his next film.