Writer and Director: Petr Jancárek
Much of Petr Jancárek’s film, Hável Speaking, Can You Hear Me?, shown as part of the 28th Made in Prague Festival, is a warm tribute to an astonishing man. Anyone who was around when the Berlin Wall came down will remember Czechoslovakia’s momentous Velvet Revolution in late 1989 in which, thanks to the steadfast vision of Václav Havel, it peacefully shook off communist rule and transitioned into a democratic country. Havel, a dissident writer and thinker, did not seek political power, but accepted the presidency of the new country. With the dissolution of Czechslovakia at the end of 1992, Havel became the first president of the new Czech Republic from 1993-2003.
The film makes clear Havel’s importance on the world stage. We see old footage of him with a host of world leaders, including Mrs Thatcher, the Queen, Angela Merkel, the Pope, and, shortly before Havel died in 2011, with the Dalai Lama.
At the start of Hável Speaking, Can You Hear Me?, we are told that in 2009 Havel himself asked director Petr Jancárek to record the rest of his life. The opening scene shows Havel having a plaster cast made of his hand, prior to its being cast in glass. It’s a touching scene, Havel joking that experts will study the life lines on his hand and predict the exact date of his death. His genial good humour seems typical of the subsequent scenes we are shown. He comes across as a man singularly lacking in vanity
But we might, at the same time, wonder why exactly Havel wanted this film made.
Old footage shows some of the highlights on his time in office, interspersed with scenes from his subsequent life. In one, he jokes about hoping he’d be “free as a bird” once he stood down, but discovers that whereas you’re only ever president for a limited time, you’re an ex-president for life. He is flown round the world, earning a rapturous reception wherever he goes. He admits to feeling a bit lonely, recognising that he’s expected to play a role, that people want some kind of hope. And that although he doesn’t believe there is a single solution to the world’s problems, he understands that he has a duty to present his values – “Like Don Quixote,” he marks, “one must always be reaching for something.” He reads his own poetry with a certain ruefulness, laughing at some of his more overblown expressions. There really is such a lot to like about the man.
But quite a lot of Jancárek’s footage is unremarkable. There are protracted scenes about a play Havel started back in 1989 entitled Leaving. He shows us the manuscript. It’s going to be revived and we follow him to rehearsals in New York where it’s going to be staged. He talks about how his first love was film-making and how he was influenced by an uncle who was a pioneer in the Czech film industry. But under the communist regime he wasn’t allowed to attend film school. Play writing therefore became his substitute. Now we see a very artificial scene in which he shares with a small committee his dream as an older man of finishing his career by making a film version of Leaving. He talks of having a “specific vision” for the film, but can only point to a hand-drawn sketch. It’s hard not to see this as an old man’s vanity project. From the glimpses we are shown of it, Leaving the film seems an embarrassing failure.
And indeed from here on in, it seems rather unkind than insightful to follow round Havel with a camera. His health is clearly in steep decline. He has a minor stroke. He starts to use a stick and we see him stumbling onto the stage at some sort of event to celebrate his film. Quite what Jancárek hopes to achieve with Hável Speaking, Can You Hear Me? becomes more opaque as the film leads up to Havel’s death.
Hável Speaking, Can You Hear Me? screened at the 28th Made in Prague Festival 2024 from 31 October to 30 November.
Great man grows old
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