Masterful Movie

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

"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.

You don't have to be a big fan of foreign film to like this movie, though you might require some patience. The beauty of PROTEKOR is how well it depicts the WWII lives of semi-elite members of society in both a place, Prague, and a profession, film and entertainment, having more physical and social distance from the conflict. That is - at first. Of course the war catches up with our characters and we see what they are truly made of. Our leading characters, overly ambitious husband and wife, are vain, flawed and often reckless. But we manage to become attached to both of them and the story revolves around their hidden reserves of fortitude and, ultimately, their shining hour. There is one film devise that some may see as "artsy-foreign". But it's well used and never overly so. You should enjoy PROTEKOR.

Viewed at the Festival de Cannes 2010Protektor was the Czech Republic's official submission to 82nd Academy Award's Foreign Language in 2010. It didn't win.Okay, if you want to know the plot go read the IMDb summary, that's what it's for. But if you can't be bothered: Czech radio journalist Emil starts to collaborate with the Nazis to protect his Jewish actress wife, Vera.But Protektor is no Schindler's List and on the scale of Holocaust-themed films it comes way down, being essentially a relationship drama. His career takes off and hers, well, is over and if she's not careful, so is her life. But the unforgivable flaw with the film is that there is no tension here, no atmosphere. Everything unfurls in a drawn out and typically central European narrative manner. The film is simply flat and dull.To make matters worse is the character of Vera, who is, quite simply, a preening and self- obsessed egomaniac. Don't think for a moment I'm saying she deserves what she gets because she is Jewish. But she does deserve everything she gets she embarks, among other things, on a highly visible and dangerous affair and then adopts on a course of behaviour that is quite literally suicidal. It is impossible to like or even sympathise with such an unpleasant individual.Protektor wants to examine how people react under such circumstances but it fails with Emil too. The character is never properly defined. Does the film wish to say that many people also drifted into collaboration as opposed to embracing the enemy with love at first sight? I suppose so, but the director busks around the subject in such a way that his intent is never clear.Visually, in terms of sets and costumes, camera-work and lighting, Protektor looks great. But unless you're a completist or fan of Central European cinema, or just want to see why the Czech Republic didn't take home the Academy Award, there's no real reason to see this film.

This is a review I posted on another forum.Let me get the beauty of it out of the way first - it looks astonishing. The colors are fantastic, the highlights are beautiful and the shadows are surprisingly tense and deep. Take a classically beautiful noir film and make it even more beautiful, on better film stock, and add a better DP. Whoa man! However, with the editing, it throws you into many different spirals always wondering what is actually happening to the man, changing which characters you care about more and changing how you think a character is going to act - sending all of your ideas about what could happen next all over the spectrum.My one complaint about the editing was that sometimes to relate scenes (relating scenes as in the way Tarantino did it with Pulp Fiction by having diegetic music in one scene that spills over into the next scene. It's done very often), the editor would show clips from the next scene in the current scene. Now it's very interesting, because it doesn't give you any idea what's going to happen next, it just adds to the emotion you are supposed to feel during that scene. While it adds a lot to the storytelling, it is noticeable. Like sound design, 99% of the time, good editing should go nearly unnoticed by the viewer. It's not at all that I don't like the editing, I just found it awkward at some points.I won't even get into the score and music. See the movie! There was also one big problem with the ending - and I won't give any important information away, it's just that there should be no credit music. Once you see it, you'll know exactly what I mean.Now maybe it won't win Best Foreign Film, but I'll be surprised if it isn't nominated.