The second would be probably The Pharaoh - https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/drama/pharaoh - for its scenography + for the script which focuses on a quite interesting problem (politics + well.. astronomy;)
The vast majority of those movies will most likely seem quite atypical for a person who is mostly familiar with modern Hollywood/world cinema, as they're in most cases slow-paced, melancholic, and in many cases focusing on intellectually-interesting problems (e.g. The Pharaoh's 'dilemma')
I can maybe compare them to video games from 80's and 90's. Today's games are visually beautiful and movie-like, but it's those games from 80's/90's which have 'soul' and ability to captivate players through well thought-out stories and hand-drawn art.
From the Romanian movies present there, I liked Aferim - https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/comedy/aferim - but only because it's a sobering look at our history; for non-romanians, it might not be so good. Filantropica (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314067/) is also a great movie that illustrates well the post-revolution atmosphere in the country (and it's more likely to be universally-enjoyed than Aferim), but they don't have it on this site.
That's a depressing and really slow-paced movie.. one can appreciate that this is part of the message, but honestly I don't think many people will really enjoy it. Not saying it's a bad movie... it's just that it's (intentionally) not a pleasant watching experience.
I also don't think it will leave one enlightened in any way - has the strange quality of being both accurate & misleading at the same time. Plus, the state of our medical system is a topic of interest for Romanians but not really anybody else, I believe.
"The Pharaoh" is interesting in that it is based on the Polish novel by Prus which besides being (I'm sure) important to Polish literature, is also important to Esperanto culture, as Kabe's 1907's translation of it ("La Faraono") is still considered a model of clean, non-idiomatic prose in Esperanto.
> as they're in most cases slow-paced, melancholic
Only Russian.
There is a whole genre of crazy Czech comedies from the 60ies which are even better than the wellknown Japanese crazy comedies.
Hungarian movies from the 70ies were the best in the world, likewise Romanian neorealistic movies starting with the Death of Mr Lazetescu end of the 90ies. Poland dominated the 80ies.
Russian movies from the Petersburg producer group around Balabanov were outstanding in the 00ies. Still very influential.
Hausu the most famous, Crazy family was even in the theaters worldwide. Sion Sono is every year in your next film festival (Love Exposure his best), and many many batshit crazy small films. Like the crazy Czech comedies from the 60ies, my favorite being "Who killed Jessie". But also the crazy polish scifi comedies.
It’s not quite the 1970s, but I really enjoy The Witness (A tanú), a Hungarian satire of communism from 1969. I’m pleased to see that it’s available on the site and strongly recommend watching it.
"atypical" and "melancholic" feels so sugarcoated to me! Watching most of these is like letting one share some psycho-trauma with you, with little regard to balance the experience for average Joe (which I'm sure film creators have profiled many times). I understand that making a movie as niche somewhat hedges it against the fallout of ending up a commercial utter failure, but when most of the filmmakers do that the market at large is left pretty dry. Why are we chocked up with Hollywood movies? Because (just like in other industries) the local producers play it safe.
If movies were software, The Saragossa Manuscript would be a Go application and The Pharaoh — a Java application. I would add to them a JavaScript move: Innocent Sorcerers (1960; https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/melodrama/innocent-sorcere...), a paragon of intimate New Wave cinema demonstrating how to build erotic tension without any sex scenes.
I wonder if national experience rubs off on movies. Many Hollywood movies have historically been optimistic because in general, a the American myth[0] has been pretty much optimistic and triumphalist (until recently, with People's History of the United States maybe the first popular work challenge the myth). Eastern Europe on the other hand has endured centuries of misery. As the war zone between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire, as the war zone between Protestants and Catholics, as the war zone between the French and the Austrians, as the war zone between the Germans and Austrians, as the War zone between the Russians and Ottomans, as the war zone between the Germans and Russians, as the war zone between the Germans and Soviets, as the war zone between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This suffering may have caused a certain melancholic outlook on life which is reflected in the movies.
0. The American myth goes that our forefathers came to a wilderness, built the colonies, fought and won against the super power of the age, marched West and conquered the rest of the continent, fought a war to ensure Union and free the slaves, industrialized, saved Europe twice from the Germans, became a super power, saved the world from Communism, landed a man on the moon, and is the shining city on a hill that people all over the world aspire to come to, and other countries envy. Like all myths, there is a lot that is not true, but a lot people in the US embrace this myth.
There are definitely national trends to movies. Compare the "american ending" (in which everyone gets their just deserts on-screen) with the "french ending" (which occurs in media res, allowing its viewers to debate what likely happens next). I've noticed these national trends even occur at technical conferences, where anglophone endnote speakers tend to summarise the proceedings into a coherent narrative ("conclusions"), while francophone endnote speakers tend to enumerate a bunch of loose ends that might be addressed by the next conference ("future work").
(Speaking of national trends, I was surprised to run across a russian superhero movie a couple of years ago. What other non-Hollywood countries make superhero movies?)
Americans like clear delineation between good and bad. Hero must be likable. Ending must punish the bad and reward the good. If something bad happens to character, it is punishment.
It's also very visible in games. For example in Dungeons and Dragons each character has 2-axis "alignement" - you can be any combination of lawful/neutral/chaotic and good/neutral/evil. And it has gameplay consequences - there are spells that detect if somebody is evil, weapons that can't be used by a good person, etc.
In many western computer RPGs like Bethesda or Bioware games they have big decisions with assigned "good" and "evil" choices, and the game counts how many times you have choosen each and gives you good or bad ending.
And it's even visible at the level of single quests - it's a trope that when you save someone in a game and (s)he offers you a prize you should decline and you'll almost guaranteed to get a better prize.
Compared to that Polish games (for example the Witcher series, but also This War of Mine and to a lesser degree Dying Light and Call of Juarez) have no "good" and "evil" decisions - instead you have decisions where each option is good for some reason and bad for another reason. And often there's a choice that ends bad either way (this is especially the Witcher trademark - there's like 100 different quests where you have to choose between 2 parties that are in conflict, both have reasons for their position, and both hate each other and no matter what you chose someone will suffer).
I find this much more realistic than the American good-vs-evil default.
I think it's mostly caused by recent history where Poland was saved from Nazi occupation by Soviet occupation and both murdered thousands of people - we are very aware culturally that being the enemy of one evil doesn't mean you're good. The whole Witcher franchise is exploration of lesser evil and price of neutrality.
> It's also very visible in games. For example in Dungeons and Dragons each character has 2-axis "alignement" - you can be any combination of lawful/neutral/chaotic and good/neutral/evil.
Note that D&D got this from Michael Moorcock [1], who is a British sword and sorcery author, and in whose works being Chaotic or Lawful is much less clear-cut, morally speaking. So I m not sure that D&D is a good example of "American thinking".
Well USA and UK is basically the same culture when you look from outside anglosphere.
Traditional western fantasy is all about Good vs Evil and Tolkien was technically British as well.
Compare that to the Witcher book series where the evil slavery empire fights the evil racist kingdoms who are racist towards elves (who have their own racist empire on another plane where they genocided humans). And the only good guy is a hired mutant hunter who strives to be neutral (and through the books learns that he can't).
Yes, maybe I was unclear: it's both that Moorcock is British and anti-Tolkien (seriously: read his essay "Epic Pooh" [1] about Tolkien: Moorcock hates his guts). Moorcock's writings are pretty much a subversion of the usual Evil vs Good tropes, the Hero's Journey, etc.
I agree with you Tolkien is indeed a good exponent of the Good vs Evil mentality.
I've read his Runestaff cycle and it felt pretty Good vs Evil to me. Maybe because I was like 13 then so I mostly read for cool fights etc :)
I've also read a few books about Elric and they felt a lot like Conan which I guess is another example of non Good-vs-Evil fantasy in English, so that's 2.
Elric is pretty much the opposite of Good-vs-Evil. Or rather, it's Gray-vs-Trying-To-Be-Good-But-Destroying-Everything-You-Hold-Dear ;)
In a pretty good subversion of the hero's journey, Elric starts a powerful ruler and wizard (though a sickly, drug-addicted one), and doesn't set off on adventures to gain power. And his patron gods are the gods of Chaos, not the gods of Law. Elric is an anti-hero in contrast to Tolkien's more clear-cut heroes.
Even the game Dungeons & Dragons explores the implications of having interesting True Neutral or morally gray characters, or situations where being classically "good" is not possible or desirable.
I've read a few books from middle of the cycle (because that's what my countryside library had in 90s). So it's possible I missed the point. But I remember not being impressed.
As for D&D the alignment mechanic feels very artificial and is often houseruled out altogether here. Fun fact - in Poland the most popular ttrpg was (and probably still is) Warhammer FRPG, not D&D. And it's considerably more shades of gray and pessimistic than D&D :) D&D was often considered backward and "for kids" compared to the "real" RPGs, it changes a little with 5e because of Critical Role and all the hype.
But that success of Warhammer was mostly caused by being the first AAA quality RPG to be published in Poland and making a big marketing campaign in 90s, so that's not an argument for or against the cultural differences.
Well, Warhammer's Chaos gods are also inspired by Moorcock ;)
Warhammer is definitely more shades of gray than D&D, but I think D&D has some of that too, especially with its less common (and less heroic) settings such as Planescape, Dark Sun, etc.
PS: in case you're a Pole, how did you like Netflix's Witcher? Years ago I read the English translation of The Last Wish and it felt very fresh to me -- I really liked that the monsters are non-standard, it resembled Jack Vance's fiction in that way -- but stopped short of the novels, because what I've been told about them didn't impress me. I really, really liked the short stories though.
I liked it, but it's not as good as I imagined it would be. They skipped a lot of the nuances and philosophy and just made Geralt grunt and curse, especially the talking in the short story with elves and the goat-man was great and they cut it beyond recognition. Sapkowski's main strength is dialogs so that was sad.
But it's still much better than Polish movie about Witcher from 2000. It was the biggest disappointment of my youth :)
Geralt come across as asshole, but in the books he is not. He has banter with friend in the books, in the series he is just dick. In the books witchers are said to not have emotions, but he has them right and left.
I think he's talking generic. Most(not all) of the USA movies are good/bad clearly defined, even physically the good guy is handsome while the bad guy is not, is a "trope". It's more clearly defined than in movies from other parts of the world.Not always and not in every movie, not every character but most of them. If you prefer you can tell is a Hollywood thing.
>(Speaking of national trends, I was surprised to run across a russian superhero movie a couple of years ago. What other non-Hollywood countries make superhero movies?)
> What other non-Hollywood countries make superhero movies
I can think of a smattering of Japanese ones like Ogon Bat, there's the Western European Uderzo/Goscinny "heroes" of Asterix and Lucky Luke, and Hong Kong's martial-arts based superheroes steeped in Wuxia tradition.
(And of course Bollywood and Mainland China have shamelessly ripped off Marvel/DC heroes and plots.)
That's one of my 'jokes' with my Polish half of the family: Poland chose just about the shittiest place to be in: a plane between Prussians, Russians, Austrians...
By the way, don't forget the most important internal divide in Eastern Europe: orthodox vs catholics.
A remark I often make with my family is: Poland is about the optimal spot on the planet! We have mild climate, no weird weather events besides an occasional flood, no earthquakes, volcanos, etc. We have sea access and mountains to scale. We're just about enough developed a country for a comfortable lifestyle. Our crazies, both left-wing and right-wing, are just mildly crazy compared to countries around us. We have enough resources to live off and sell, but nothing so substantial as to induce a resource curse (and in particular, no oil = nobody will come to bring us Freedom). We're not the bleeding edge, but also not the lagging tail. We're comfortably average.
Same for Romania - good climate, access to the Carpathians and the Black Sea. However, I find my people to be pretty pessimistic altough I now believe we actually have it a bit better than we think.
Don't forget the Mongols/Tatars. There were serious raids even in 15th century and Poland's mostly plain and open landscape made things so easy for the raiders!
> As the war zone between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire, as the war zone between Protestants and Catholics, as the war zone between the French and the Austrians, as the war zone between the Germans and Austrians, as the War zone between the Russians and Ottomans, as the war zone between the Germans and Russians, as the war zone between the Germans and Soviets, as the war zone between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This suffering may have caused a certain melancholic outlook on life which is reflected in the movies.
I think you missed perhaphs the greatest tragedy (apart from both world wars and the Holocaust, which also very disproportionally touched Poland, as Poland hosted by far the most Jews in Europe at that time), which was the introduction of Leninist/Stalinist variant of Communism. Hitler was a monster, by he ruled over us for just a few years, while the communists destroyed societies for decades...
Both of those are great movies that are even more amazing books. Saragossa Manuscript in particular if you like gothic/spooky fiction; it's a lot older than Poe.
The second would be probably The Pharaoh - https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/drama/pharaoh - for its scenography + for the script which focuses on a quite interesting problem (politics + well.. astronomy;)
The vast majority of those movies will most likely seem quite atypical for a person who is mostly familiar with modern Hollywood/world cinema, as they're in most cases slow-paced, melancholic, and in many cases focusing on intellectually-interesting problems (e.g. The Pharaoh's 'dilemma')
I can maybe compare them to video games from 80's and 90's. Today's games are visually beautiful and movie-like, but it's those games from 80's/90's which have 'soul' and ability to captivate players through well thought-out stories and hand-drawn art.