Directed by:
Julius ŠevčíkScreenplay:
Julius ŠevčíkCinematography:
Antonio RiestraCast:
Milan Kňažko, Dagmar Havlová, Pavel Gajdoš, Jan Vlasák, Zuzana Kajnarová, Miroslav Táborský, Pavel Kikinčuk, Norbert Lichý, Meto Jovanovski, Michal Hofbauer (more)Plots(1)
Between 1929 and 1931 Peter Kuerten brutally murdered eight people and attacked many others. He spread the same panic as Jack the Ripper once did in London. Now, this brutal sadist has voluntarily turned himself in to the police and a young ambitious lawyer, Justus Wehner, is assigned to defend him. Wehner is certain that Kuerten suffers from a severe mental disorder and decides to prove the killer insane. A battle of the minds between a righteous lawyer and an intelligent monster ensues. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (8)
Are monsters born, or do we create them? That's the question and an important pillar of the film. The reviews that say Normal is anything but normal were, in a sense, right. It's a thriller with everything and it stands out from the crowd in the poor Czech cinema. It is perverse! It's morbid! But it's definitely not normal! The actors fit their characters like an apple to a tree. Milan Kňažko gives a great and convincing performance. Dagmar Havlová doesn't have much space, but she's captivating too. Newcomer Pavel Gajdoš definitely has a future in the film world. A well-written script, a well-situated camera and the icing on the cake is a perfectly lit and as colourless as possible image, which really suits films of this type. Looking at it as a whole, it impressed me and made me think and ponder ... 75%.
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At first, I appreciated how even a Czech filmmaker can get behind the camera so that he doesn't shoot the same characters at a static angle at face level. These are the people that keep on worrying about small Czech problems over and over again, but once your eyes have seen enough - especially when Ševčík alternates "cool" shots with the cheapest ones - you start to think he is, in fact, showing us nothing. If Milan Kňažko is not in the frame, the monster is only talked about, and that is simply not enough. An unhappy childhood is just words in a void and a legal dilemma is just a sweaty forehead and a shirt without a tie. Not to mention love and other deeper things. When Ševčík finds a screenwriter who can thicken the plot, his solid images will get a solid idea and an original Czech filmmaker. This film left my mind on the way home. 2 ½.
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I’m sure many people won’t agree with me, but immediately after leaving the cinema I’m happy that Normal the Düsseldorf Ripper didn’t fulfil what the trailer had promised. Yes, the visuals are of course excellent, but the expected plot of a classic thriller didn’t turn out to be true. Nowadays there are thrillers everywhere, but a lyrical psychological drama like this is a very unusual thing, not only here in Czechia, so why complain when it works really well? The actors are great without exception, the dialogues serve more as an expression of extreme moods than to move the plot forward, which is very fitting for the style of the film.
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My impressions are somewhat contradictory: on the one hand, the wonderful idea of expanding the expressionist image of a monster, which reflects the essential dilemmas of the Weimar Republic, a bizarre intermediate stage between the creature and the savior. However, Ševčík offers only very schematic answers to all the burning questions in a selected visual, great composition, in the play of light and darkness. He reduces the characters to the level of symbols of "good", "evil", "innocence", and does not offer complex psychological portraits. In the end, however, the viewer is not much wiser than at the beginning. Yes, a well-versed fan of German expressionism will be delighted, and it also warms the soul that a Czech film is finally coming to movie theatres that does not go with the flow and evokes controversial impressions. Personally, I would like to watch Normal: The Düsseldorf Rippe in detail once more time to see if my constructions have support in what was filmed. Part of me feels that Ševčík made a lot of promises, served a full tray of treats for "literate" viewers, but under the selected audio-visual, this is far from a film that can satisfactorily answer its own questions. However, I emphasize: we have not had such a stimulating Czech film for years. Hosanna.
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In a certain sense, Ševčík's Normal reminds me of the works of director F.A. Brabec - at the very least in terms of how the form strongly outweighs the banal content and how the director revels in depicting the most clichéd of clichés. Normal is pretentious, impressively filmed, meticulously scored, and adequately performed pseudo-artistic boredom. The dialogues are full of clichés, and the screenplay is uninspired and lacks tension. I experience more excitement watching a children's bedtime story... Overall impression: 40%.
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