The Protector (2009)

"Protektor" is one of the most unusual Holocaust movies I've seen. For starters, it takes a playful attitude--not quite dark humor but definitely quirky--with its plinky soundtrack (much of the music consists of a single staccato chord thrown in a scene) and with an odd fixation on bicycles. But what makes it really unusual is the complex, imperfect characters who serve as the protagonists.The story spans 1938-1942 during the Czech occupation by Nazis. Our heroes are Hana, a Jewish movie star, and her husband Emil, a radio announcer who is not Jewish. Right at the outset we see that their marriage is not ideal. Emil is violently jealous of her flirtations (and possible infidelity) with other men while he himself gets involved with indiscretions with other women. I did not find either character particularly likeable, and this may have been deliberate on the part of the director. What follows once the Nazis take over is a slow escalating tension as Emil fraternizes with Nazis, supposedly to ensure is wife's protection but possibly also to further his selfish interests. Meanwhile Hana begins sneaking around with a mysterious young man who photographs her doing illegal things, flaunting her rebellion toward the Nazis.So you see, it's not your standard Jewish victim vs. Nazi bad guy story. While there's no doubt that the Nazis are the brutes, there's a more subtle antagonsim between Hana and Emil which provides the real conflict amidst the backdrop of the Holocaust. There is also a cleverly-spun subplot of an assassination attempt against a high-ranking Nazi, and we don't get that full story until the end.Visually, "Protektor" is very stylish, presenting a nostalgic 40s prism without the obvious clichés like black & white. Instead certain colors are muted while others pop out. There's a lot of high contrast which is pleasing on the eye, and there are a few moments of surrealism that add a nice original touch.If you think you've seen all the Holocaust flicks out there, check this out. Or even if you have just a casual interest in Europe under Nazi occupation, this provides a great window on how life changed in the early years. If you don't necessarily like Holocaust flicks and just randomly picked up this movie based on its striking DVD cover (like I did), you may find it frustrating at first but ultimately it's a worthwhile experience.

"Protektor" is fortunately not just another Holocaust movie. Since "Schindler's List", most of other attempts to grapple with this horrible blight to humanity, fell short. Perhaps Steven Spielberg made the ultimate Holocaust movie. Director Marek Najbrt, luckily comes up with a fresh idea. His stylish film-noir, filmed beautifully, is more than anything else, a treatise on the nature of collaboration. It is easy to simplify matters and judge with the righteous indignation those who served the losing side. People do it for variety of reasons, fear, money, blackmail or the sweet arousal of power. And some, like increasingly, as movie goes, dis likable Emil, manage to convince themselves that there is no other choice. But, there always is, even if it means pain and sacrifice. Some other Emil will ardently serve similar masters in different uniforms, only few years later. Alas, that is the nature of humanity. As long as there is, a heavy boot of oppression, there will be enthusiastic servitude of shoe-shiners.

Director Marek Najbrt's "Protector" opens on the streets of Prague in the year 1942. The Butcher of Prague (Reinhard Heydrich aka The Reichprotektor of Czechoslovakia) has been assassinated, and our hero, journalist Emil Vrbata, is furiously bicycling home.The film then flashes back to the late 1930s, and introduces us to Emil's wife, the movie star Hana Vrbatova. Hana is Jewish, and so when the Nazis invade and occupy Czechoslovakia, she is subjected to all manners of persecution (being banned from public spaces, cinemas, fired from her job etc).An elderly actor offers to supply Hana with papers and forged passports so that she may flee the country, but Hana turns down his offer. She has a fiery, rebellious personality, and is determined to stand her ground. What's interesting, though, is that Hana objects to the Nazis not because of ideological or moral reasons, but because she views them as having "ruined" her film career. She views them as having tarnished her "movie star" and replaced it with a "Jewish Star", a literal badge which she (and all other Jews in occupied Europe) is forced to wear.This self-centred, narcissistic, ego-maniacal and narrow minded attitude infects everyone in the film. Hana's husband, for example, locks his wife at home and forbids her from leaving the house. He claims to be "protecting her" – and initially he is - but what he really wants is to keep her Jewishness under wraps so that he can keep his job (he becomes a famous radio personality) and be with his new mistress. The wider implication here is that whilst the world paid lip service to the horrors of the Holocaust, the reality is that most kept quiet and treated things as a career opportunity (see the romanticising of the profiteer Oskar Schindler, whom historians are now starting to debunk as a saviour); everyone's exploiting in the guise of "protecting".So the film examines how altruism often masks dark opportunity. How the notion of "protecting" someone often conflicts with self interests to such an extent that you actively cause harm to the person you're supposed to be "protecting", resulting in all manners of delusions and feigned interests. This serves as a metaphor for the Reichprotektor of Czechoslovakia, Poland (WW2 was disingenuously waged to "protect" Poland), Hitler, American, Russian, Italian and British politicians, as well as the millions of civilians who fuelled or were complicit in the Imperialist maneuvers of WW2 whilst simultaneously denouncing these very same evils.The last Czech film Hana stars in features a sequence in which she pedals on a fixed bicycle whilst landscape shots are rear-projected on a screen behind her. This motif – expressionistic shots of characters frantically pedalling but going nowhere – is found throughout Najbrt's film. Everyone is frantically pedalling but achieving nothing, forever unable to reach any desirable destination. In a sense, they're trying to escape Naziism but are unable to escape its pull because they are actively supporting that which they pedal against.The film ends with Emil throwing down his bicycle and standing up for his wife. He takes on the role of protector, of that white knight which films like "Schindler's List" mythologise. But the knight is a fantasy and Emil is too late. The Nazis march a crowd of Jews to their death transports as Emil stands helplessly on the sidelines. His moment of action was too little too late. Even worse, Emil's probably also now lost his job.8/10 – This film has a great screenplay. Observe its cleverly ironic title, its loop-around structure (which suggests a noose being pulled tightly), the way it attempts to understand those who collaborated with the Nazis, the way it deftly paints a country under foreign occupation, the way it evokes the imminent Holocaust, and the way it puts forward suggestions for how events like the Holocaust come to be. For these reasons I have given the film a much higher score than it deserves.Unfortunately, Najbrt's direction is inept. This is a low budget film (funded in part by HBO) which shouldn't be trying to look bigger than it is, Najbrt using a number of visual and sonic devices which simply don't work. Better to tune out the film and focus on the writer's voice behind the images.Some more interesting Holocaust films: "Korczak", "The Garden of the Finzi Continis", "Seven Beauties", "Border Street", "Diamonds of the Night", "Europa Europa", "Fateless", "The Last Stop", "Salo", "Amen", "The New Land", "Passenger", "The Pawnbroker", "Homicide", "The Wannsee Conference", "The Boat is Full", "The Grey Zone", "Bizalom", "Au Revoir Les Enfants" and "The Shop On Main Street".

Protektor (2009) is a Czech film, directed by Marek Najbrt and shown in the United States as "Protector." (The title refers to Reinhard Heydrich, who was a high-ranking German Nazi official. He was Deputy Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia.)Marek Daniel plays Emil Vrbata, a Czech journalist and radio announcer, who has no Nazi sympathies. However, Marek takes on the role of media spokesperson in order to protect his wife, Hana, who is Jewish. (Hana is played by the lovely Jana Plodková .) Hana is given papers that will allow her to escape Czechoslovakia, but she disdains them. She, like so many others, cannot believe that the European powers will accept Hitler's demand for the Czech Sudetenland in order to prevent war. However, as we know, that's exactly what happened, and eventually Germany occupied all of Czechoslovakia, and began the ruthless persecution of Jews and of all opponents to the Third Reich.Everyone has a limit beyond which he or she will not be pushed, but who knows where that limit is? Both of the protagonists in the film are selfish, reckless, and immature. That behavior may have been acceptable--or at least not lethal--in prewar Czechoslovakia. However, once the Nazis took over, it was just a matter of time before people had to change or be destroyed.Someone pointed out that neither Emil nor Hana are particularly praiseworthy individuals, and that's true. However, as I see it, that's the point of the movie. We have all seen movies about heroes and martyrs. This is a movie about flawed people who find themselves in a horrendous situation. How they deal with this situation is at the crux of the film.We saw this movie at the very praiseworthy Rochester Jewish Film Festival. It will also work well on DVD. It's not a great film, but it's definitely worth finding and seeing.