Krakatit

A prescient film anticipating the Cold War based on an even more prescient novel published in 1922, Otakar Vávra’s Krakatit is a hallucinatory fever dream, an apocalyptic warning, and a masterpiece of the film noir cycle. Produced in the short period between Nazism and communism, the film seems to reflect on a world that has learned nothing from the war (“European capitals are burning”) in the form of an experimental scientist named Prokop (Karel Höger) who’s entered a state of delirium as a result of a laboratory explosion. After the barely conscious Prokop is rescued on the street by an old classmate (Miroslav Homola), he wakes up alone in the classmate’s apartment to discover that someone has stolen his secret chemical formula for a new explosive called krakatit. Thus begins Prokop’s surreal expedition to hunt down the formula before it can be used for mass destruction. Combining some of the poetic visual qualities of Andrei Tarkovksy and harsh aural qualities of David Lynch, the film alternates between dream, delirium, and actuality, these boundaries entirely unclear to the viewer from one fascinating scene to the next. Intensifying the depiction of Prokop’s psychological suffering is Hanus’ inventive cinematography featuring noir markers like Dutch angles, slow-flashing lights, slow pans, and foggy exteriors, and Srnka’s dissonant, despondent score, which maintains no melody but meanders through harp, piano, theremin, French horn, and heavy, grinding vibrations that conjure a stark, industrial wasteland. Theological interpretations are unavoidable as the crowd lauds Prokop as the “King of Matter” and he’s tempted, Christ-like, by a powerful ambassador who promises him the whole world as his laboratory. Fun fact: the Czech author of the novel, Karel Capek, is credited with having coined the word “robot.”