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The Barnabás Kos Case
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - Second Run Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (27th April 2025). |
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The Film
 Barnabáš Kos (The Ninth Heart's Josef Kemr) is a triangle player in one of the state orchestras, a roll that pretty much anyone could fill, so Kos finds personal value in taking on other responsibilities with various party committees. When he receives a registered letter appointing him as musical director, he believes it must have been meant for someone else but trying to return the letter to the post office proves to be an exercise in frustration, the committee members that appointed him see nothing in his record of service to the party that disqualifies him from the appointment, and the comrade who recommended him seems to either be pretending to know him or has also mistaken him for someone else. The orchestra conductor Ruman (Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet's Milivoj Uzelac) who castigated him for missing rehearsals for his party duties surprisingly acquiesces along with the entire orchestra but the only person who actively encourages him is secretary Julka (Jarmila Kostova) with whom he had a flirtation before but who seems to find him more attractive in a position of authority. Gaining the attention and flattery of the sort of people who never noticed him before, Kos easily slips into his position despite his own doubts; however, when he overhears the disdain with which the orchestra regards his former role and sees that pretty much anyone can strike the triangle in between their own parts, Kos starts paying daily visits to the practice room to play the triangle (arriving with an entourage and departing as soon as his single note is played). Kos then decides to make his mark on the Slovak music scene by exploring the untapped potential of the triangle, replacing Ruman with a more cooperative conductor and "seducing" composer Gregus (Jan Bzduch) into coming up with a new piece to demonstrate the instrument's expressive qualities. Ruman, Gregus, and the one musician who defied Kos and was fired are not more successful at convincing the committee of Kos' incompetence and their only option may be to let him fail spectacularly and publicly… but at what cost to their integrity and their art? An early example of Kafka-influenced Slovakian satire, The Barnabás Kos Case – based on the novel by Peter Karvas – was not the feature debut of director Peter Solan (The Boxer and Death) but his attempts to get it to the screen predated his actual feature debut, the second of the two previous attempts having been blocked by someone not unlike Barnabáš Kos himself who took it as a direct attack on himself (more on that elsewhere on the disc). The absurdity of the film's bureaucratic structures in the world of the film might have seemed amplified for comic effect at the time but the accuracy of this depiction of a system that rewards the loyal over the talented is more blatant than before. While we might have no sympathy for the modern-day Barnabás Koses of the world, the film compellingly and sympathetically depicts the transformation of nobody who is only visible when he does not fall into line to an egotist and even a fascist with his veiled threat to Julka when she sincerely confides in him her concern about the heights of his ambitions (Julka too seems at first like a Lady Macbeth only for Kos to accurately point out that she is disconnected from his colleagues having also been secretary to his predecessor who seems to have been an infrequent visitor to the orchestra). Kos is initially all-too-willing to concede the absurdity of his appointment until one of his comrades makes makes it all to clear everyone else feels the same way. It is easy to identify with Kos at first as he turns the mechanisms of power used against him at the start by the conductor – who seems less inconvenienced by the absence of a triangle player whose role is filled by the percussionist in Kos absence, than in Kos having the excuse of being able to defy him however unintentionally and be absent due to various party responsibilities – and Kemr is masterful in conveying how even the most mild-mannered, unassuming person can be seduced by power (as well as suggesting retrospectively that perhaps his earlier minor responsibilities fed into his desire for any kind of position of authority). The complaints of Kos' chief detractors are brushed off by the committee without admit making a mistake, instead stating that he "did his job" – basically filling a position regardless of his harmful impact on the arts – and they too do not get off unscathed when they decide to just do their jobs and let Kos embarrass himself. The film's cynicism extends to the ending with Kos' glee at discovering another registered letter for him, indicating not that he has been fired but that he is being transferred to another position which may not have the same prestige but he will still remain a cog in the machine. Solan went through periods of being blocked from making features during which he made safe television documentaries and shorts but Slovak works that were not co-productions seemed to have had less opportunity for export and his satirical eye often jarred with the Social Realist mode of filmmaking with its images of clean living and positive role models, with most of his major works including this and Before the Night is Over and his segment of the Czech/Slovak/Polish experimental film Dialogue 20-40-60 reaching most of the west in more recent years as festival programming. 
Video
The Barnabáš Kos Case is presented in a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 pillarboxed widescreen encode of a 2K restoration by the Slovak Film Institute which was also the source of said institution's all region, English-friendly but barebones Blu-ray. Unlike the Czech Film Archive's restorations that retain defects organic to the film's original processing and projection, The Barnabáš Kos Case looks utterly spotless and pristine, conveying a wonderful gradations of blacks, grays, and whites and a crispness of focus in close-ups and wider shots that makes more apparent the use of the camera along with the sound design and music to express the relationship of Kos to his surroundings along with deliberate choices to employ deep focus in some shots of the orchestra and shallower focus in other similarly wide shots as Kos singles someone out for mockery. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a Slovak LPCM 2.0 mono track of crisply-recorded post-dubbed dialogue and a rich sound design and scoring that demonstrates how lowly triangle player Kos during his ascension to power suddenly finds music in everyday objects and the how they become function and noisy during his fall. Optional English subtitles are free of errors and are valuable in conveying not only the language of bureaucracy that frustrates many into submission as well as some of the more satirical elements in the background from text to loudspeaker announcements announcing a final warning against an infraction and then noting that the next final announcement will be in five minutes. 
Extras
"Invincibility of Absurdity" (4:13) is a new introduction by Rastislav Steranka, director of National Cinematographic Centre, Slovak Film Institute who briefly touches upon Solan's previous two attempts to mount an adaptation of the story, the second at Koliba Studios quashed by a department head who saw himself in Kos and thought it was an attack on himself. "Nemecká" (8:43) is a 1974 documentary by Solan about a kiln used by the Nazis to dispose of the remains of executed partisans and Jews, an example of one of the "safe" subjects Solan could make films about at a time when he was barred from filmmaking. "Promotion (Postup)" (5:43) is a 1968 short animated film by Viktor Kubal that is more thematically-related to the feature as it depicts a little bird repeatedly rewarded for gross negligence so long as he bends over for a kicking. "Portrait: Jarmila Kostova" (8:14) is a short publicity piece on actress Kostova following her through her daily life as actress, wife, mother, and hobbyist as she prepares to make her first live television appearance in a decade. 
Packaging
The disc is housed with a 32-page booklet with new writing on the film by author Jonathan Owen and filmmaker Peter Strickland. Strickland offers up an analysis of the film while Owen discusses the film in the context of Slovak cinema's development in the sixties, Solan's three attempts to bring the story to the screen, the first being more madcap comedy, the second focusing more on the character than the totalitarian structures, and the third coming at a time of loosening restrictions as well as the promotion of developing satire in the arts and a reassessment of the works of Kafka which had been denounced by communists as "decadent" (he also notes that at this same time the Czech side of the country made Josef Kilian in which a man "rents" a cat and then encounters bureaucratic frustrations when he tries to return it). 
Overall
Slovakian cinema's first satirical film The Barnabáš Kos Case is not only observant but downright hilarious.
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