Jiří Havelka was inspired to write the story by a news report about gardener René Mandys and his struggle with an oligarch hungry for land. “He refused to sell his land and that’s when some strange things started happening to him,” director Jiří Havelka said in the Small Hall on Thursday, referring to the suspicious events that culminated in the gardener’s assault and the burning of his greenhouse.
The filmmaker connected the true story with his father’s experiences and framed it with Karel Čapek’s classic work of the same name, The Gardener’s Year. Actor Oldřich Kaiser, who is – like Mandys – very talkative, was cast in the main role. But there was a catch. “He doesn’t like to memorise texts. So I made it as easy for him as possible,” Havelka smiled talking about Kaiser’s role, which required him to barely speak on screen. “We called it a ‘comic’ – we jumped into the scene when he stopped talking and jumped out before he started again,” the theatre and film director entertained the audience. Kaiser’s voice thus appears in the film not as a regular dialogue, but as a voiceover narrating Čapek’s original text.
During a laid-back discussion, someone in the audience joked that no one should watch the film on an empty stomach, because of all the feasting and delicious food scenes. “We spent a year in the editing room with the film. We ate a lot and gained a lot,” Havelka agreed. He also shared his thoughts on Karel Čapek, stating that Čapek is far from being a naive kitsch artist. “Čapek is a national treasure. We all perceive him in our own unique ways, but he belongs to us all.”
