We Have Never Been Modern

Great technical level. The choice of time and setting and the associated production design, the use of miniature buildings and the effects that embed live characters in them is great. Even the prosthetic make-up on Ladislav Hampl's face looks pretty solid. But the story, its associated themes and characters work less well and at times seem as heavy-handed as the dumb English title We Have Never Been Modern. I have a problem with several of the moral aspects of the film, which are either presented as entirely unproblematic or, for good measure, not mentioned at all. Overall, however, this is still one of the more thematically interesting works of Czech cinema this year, though in my opinion somewhat along the lines of the saying “in the land of the the blind, the one-eyed is king”. [KVIFF 2022] (09/13/2023)

Sensitive in both senses of the word, dramatic whenever you hear an old washing machine being wrung out, and craftily self-assured in showcasing the functionalism of my hometown (whether it’s cardboard or real sets). However, the chosen central theme proved too hefty from a narrative perspective, especially when the chewed-up bits (the partners' relationships and the obstacles of burgeoning capitalism) ended up on the plate at the end. I might have overlooked something, but it seemed to me that next to the Electra L-10 at the airfield, there was also Doctor Brown's DeLorean. Perhaps it wasn’t just there to make the vulgar reference to female genitalia seem so cool. (01/18/2024)

For a 29-year-old director, this is an extremely ambitious work with powerful, intimate moments involving an original, socially sensitive subject. We Have Never Been Modern works fantastically in its timeless message about society’s ineradicable narrow-mindedness, prejudice and intolerance of anything different. However, it won’t work for everyone when it comes to the interplay of secondary themes (the problematic relationship between the protagonist and her careerist husband, the disturbing character of the counter-intelligence agent) or by setting it in a planned industrial microcosm. Nevertheless, that microcosm adds to the film’s attractiveness for the viewer, while also giving the story a historical foundation to better underscore the concept. And with the nicely stylized studio sets in the foreground of the High Tatras, it also forms the creative patina of the artistic parable. Though it’s not perfect in every detail, it is certainly something that most Czech filmmakers would not dare to attempt. Matěj Chlupáček is somewhere else and if he follows the same path over the next decade as he did between Touchless and We Have Never Been Modern, his third feature film will receive standing ovations at Cannes and Venice. [Karlovy Vary International Film Festival] (07/07/2023)

An above-averagely filmed average parable whose plot doesn't surprise much and whose characters (with perhaps one exception) hardly step out of the tightly packed boxes the script has assigned them. And while the message is commendable, We Have Never Been Modern ultimately comes off as rather ham-fisted. It's a pity that the they didn't reach for, for instance, the story of Zdeňka Koubeková/Zdeněk Koubek from the same period, which is more interesting and, more importantly, actually happened. (01/15/2024)

Someone filmed a series that was decided to be only a film in post-production. Actually, I'm a bit disappointed not to rate it higher because its crafty creative ambitions are easily justifiable on a European scale, but the development of the plot on multiple fronts only leads to a satisfying conclusion in one case (the marital dispute on the staircase, where the perception of the characters is completely turned around, is a screenplay gem, no debate about it), while each of the fronts deserved to be explored much more. Thus, it remains a cheap crime story from a dime-store detective novel, the building of capitalism on the scale of a newspaper article, and a counter-diversion action from a wet dream of a novice spy. However, the "modern" theme of the film holds up, a bit clumsily but effectively and sensitively, in retro attire. 3 and ½. (10/18/2023)