Who Will Watch the Watchman? Dalibor, or the Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, 2002, 242 min
Section: Tribute to Karel Vachek

Synopsis

Was conductor Václav Talich a collaborator? Why do Czechs engage in theatricals with each other? Will they be a nation of warehouse keepers on the crossroads of Europe? Who resents the possibility of an effective cure for cancer? And is the Czech elite an issue for the sociologist or the criminologist? Stage director Jan Antonín Pitínský is rehearsing Smetana’s opera Dalibor at the National Theatre. Karel Vachek is also conducting his own distinctive performance of Dalibor in the auditorium involving artists, scientists, intellectuals and political activists. Buoyed along by Smetana’s music, to which Vachek ascribes a mystical force, the National Theatre, the manifestation of national aspirations and self-delusion, brings to life the stories of people who stood up to official power and legislation, because they had a moral reason to do so. The Mašín brothers, former agent Vladimír Hučín, the anarchist Jakub Polák and doctors prescribing illegal devitalisation treatment for cancer sufferers – all are descendants of the rebellious Dalibor. Artists are moral examples. The failure of the elite leads to historical tragedies. According to historian Jan Tesař, the revolution of 1989 was a piece of theatre designed for a world audience – when the performance ends, collaboration begins. Then another happening will come along and the nation will be united once more. Both levels of the production – operatic and documentary – communicate with each other throughout, as though the motifs from the opera are there to provide a commentary to Vachek’s film testimony.