Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

03 May 2023

Servants (2020)


Ivan Ostrochovský's Služobníci (Servants) is a gorgeously shot film about Catholic schoolboys resisting totalitarianism in 1980s Czechoslovakia. I don't know if it's because I (incorrectly) thought this was going to be a gay story, or because I really do not care about religious convictions, but I was bored. Sure, Ostrochovský's film is clearly inspired by the gorgeous spareness of Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida, and of course I adored that movie, but this film is all beautiful pictures without anything really to say. Central to this muddle is Servants' focus on the Communist operative who is killing the young men who are in the right, here. Why should the film focus on this character so much, examining his inner life? (He is played by Romanian film star Vlad Ivanov, and I'm glad they got such a great actor for this role, but... he's playing a terrible person, and the film isn't actually about him. This whole business is a confused mess. 

Servants was released in the U.S. in February of 2022, and it's currently playing on MUBI.

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