Directed by:
Jan HřebejkScreenplay:
Petr JarchovskýCinematography:
Martin ŠáchaComposer:
Vladivojna La ChiaCast:
Aňa Geislerová, Ondřej Vetchý, Hynek Čermák, Zita Morávková, Anna Kameníková, Luděk Munzar, Miroslav Hanuš, Alena Mihulová, Daniel Czeizel, Rebeka Lizlerová (more)Plots(1)
You'll never get rid of love. It can get very quick to fall from the top to the very bottom. Sometimes, one little sentence is enough to wreck everything you'd been building. A renowned doctor and loved father and husband faces an indictment of a felony. He quickly finds himself in custody which is a place very hard for anyone to prove innocent, mainly when the opponent is being helped by a person likely motivated by a personal revenge. Well, the truth is said to beat lies and hatred. Nevertheless, that doesn't necessarily mean victory. Sometimes it's just a break before another, a whole lot more challenging fight. Especially when in the endeavor to save yourself, you sacrifice secrets that were to be kept hidden forever, because they are too dangerous for you and your loved ones. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (9)
Like plucking the petals of a daisy: “I liked it, I liked it not, I liked it, I liked it not…“. On the positive side, I should consider only the fact that, whereas I want to immediately forget about other Czech films, I still have to think about Innocence a day after seeing it. In my opinion, the stylistic contamination in the final third of the film is justified by the transition from a dispassionate detective investigation to a subjective narrative. The film belatedly gets its narrator and information about his past is conveyed to us as quickly as possible. The imposition of a personal point of view is the first dirty trick perpetrated against the viewer, whose sympathies for the person confessing are subsequently destroyed by that person’s dubious actions. Was it a plan or a confluence of coincidences? Inconsistency. The first one freed the innocent with her body, the second one made accusations. Not only the sins are similar, but so are the causes. Indifference. The narrative strangeness of Innocence, which particularly gives rise to strongly ambivalent feelings at the end (the roles of the guilty and the victim contradict how they were presented in the film), is significantly more inspiring than the shallow social-criticism level, the disturbingly conspicuous framework of the screenplay and the inconsistent integration of the characters into the plot (if the mentally disabled son was supposed to represent unassailable innocence, why does he completely disappear from the scene toward the end?). Innocence is a problematic film with a lot of flaws, but it deserves attention. 75%
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I enjoyed this Czech psychological crime drama. The cinematography and music perfectly underscored the wonderfully grim atmosphere. Hynek Čermák outshined everyone else and the young Anna Linhartová gave a very good performance. I tend to start getting bored when watching Czech films. With Kawasaki’s Rose, for instance, I got bored two minutes into the film. Innocence, however, was above average in this respect. Slightly less so in its second half but I did enjoy it and I am satisfied.
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Hřebejk and Jarchovský made a very disturbing film that makes you feel that it couldn't get any worse, but it actually can. In the film, the status of who is actually a monster and who is an asshole changes pretty quickly, and even towards the end it's not clear how much of an asshole the character actually is. Very well written and acted.
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While I don’t like comparing, a comparison with the Scandinavian movie The Hunt is at hand. It concerns a similar topic – the abuse of children. In this movie Jan Hřebejk really dug into it and the first half was flawless. Ondřej Vetchý, Anna Linhartová and Hynek Čermák showed really incredible acting performances. However, as soon as this part of the movie unexpectedly quickly closed, Aňa Geislerová entered the scene with the craziest character I’ve ever seen her play on TV and the whole movie suddenly entered a completely different dimension. I am not saying it was bad, I just think that these two ideas could easily function in two movies. And not just in one.
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Another provincial attempt at a complex psychological family drama that at times looks quite worldly, but this impression is confined to a fairly well thought out surface again. It continues to amaze me how many narrative means Hřebejk and Jarchovský are capable of using to produce stories that are so barren, sterile and genderless in terms of any urgency and opinion. Am I to think that Innocence isn't entirely embarrassing, that the actors are good and that modern storytelling means are used here? The more the creative helplessness, blandness and lack of captivating rhythm stand out. For God's sake, when is there going to be anything that's been able to compete with at least a mediocre Scandinavian drama about pathological phenomena in society?
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