Directed by Ivan Ostrochovský
Written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Marek Lescák, and Ivan Ostrochovský
Starring Samuel Skyva, Samuel Polakovic, and Vlad Ivanov
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 1 hour and 20 minutes
Premieres in virtual cinemas on February 25, also available VOD and Digital

by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer

Looking at the unmercifully Czech name in my byline, it’s fair to say that this sort of Slavic sad boy cinema is baked into my DNA. Is it slow, shot in stark black and white, existential, and about the punishing indignities men inflict upon one another? Sign me up. There’s just something about these Eastern European filmmakers who just live and breathe on this stuff, I wonder what it could be? Oh right, decades of living under totalitarian rule. First under the thumb of the Nazis, then behind the iron curtain of the soviets. And yet like Orson Welles’ monologue about the cuckoo clock at the end of The Third Man, the total repression of Eastern Europe gave us cinematic masterpieces like Ashes & Diamonds, Closely Watched Trains, The Round-Up and more modern masterpieces like The Lives of Others and Cold War, and on and on and on. It’s an underseen nook of world cinema–likely because the films can be hard to find and when you do find them they’re super depressing and not for everyone’s taste–that I can’t help but evangelize in an effort to do right by my erstwhile suburban Prague-dwelling ancestors.

So, does Ivan Ostrochovský’s film about two seminary students in totalitarian Bratislava in 1980 as the Soviet puppet government clamps down on the Catholic church belong in this canon? Did you read the logline I just reiterated? You bet it does. It’s moody, it’s bleak, and it’s depressing as hell. It’s also exquisitely crafted, beautifully shot, and features the sort of dead-quiet performances that speak volumes as they blend into the film’s landscape. Do the students want to capitulate to the Communist government–where the priest who serves as their confessor relays their confessions at intel to the local government officials–or will they heed the church’s independence and protest the government’s control of the church at the risk of being taken in the night, tortured, with their bodies dumped on a dirt road (which happens to one of the priest’s at their seminary).

Servants isn’t going for everyone. That’s not a judgment, I don’t have my pinky in the air as I look down at those who can’t handle this slow cinematic equivalent to brutalism. It’s humorless, full of subtle symbolism, and will likely lead to a straight-up bad time if you’re not in the mood to get wrecked. A recent film that came to mind while watching this (and was pretty widely seen due to its winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film) was Pawel Pawlikowski’s 2013 film Ida. That’s a good touchstone for something like Servants and the religious angle dovetails nicely. Did that one leave you in a depressive funk that you didn’t want to return to? You can skip this one. Did you like that one? This movie is right up your alley. Just make sure you have a stiff drink handy when the credits roll.