Kauza Cervanová (2013) Online

Agatha Christie seemed enamored of "murders in retrospect"... guess what: a murder case like that occurred in the tiny East-Central European country of Slovakia in 1976, and it's been traumatizing the Slovak society ever since.

A pretty female medical student was found murdered in 1976, with hands tied behind her back, lying in a creek not far from Slovakia's capital Bratislava. (For more, see the Plot Summary I submitted on this movie.)

The murder case is the subject matter of Robert Kirchhoff's outstanding documentary _Kauza Cervanová_. The production values are top-notch; the camera work by a master of the craft, Ján Meliš, is mesmerizing; the score by Peter Zagar suitably spooky. See Meliš's deft touch in the moving scene where an aging, ailing male witness in a wheelchair regrets that his testimony had never been properly considered by the police, saying, "I probably do not have much more time to live" -- while the camera is at the same time trained on his wife's pained, caring face.

The shocking thing about the original murder investigation is that, apparently, many statements by witnesses or the accused were obtained by questionable or even illicit means employed by the police, such as psychological pressure or threats of physical violence. There is a heart-breaking story of a young female medical student in early stages of pregnancy, forced by the police to testify against the 7 men charged with the murder, in spite of her conscience. She later renounces her earlier testimony, unable to reconcile it with her conscience ultimately, and is herself sentenced to a long prison term for false testimony; her small daughter is forced to grow up without her mother. Yet not enough attention seems to have been paid in the renewed 2000s murder trial to those facts of police bias or impropriety.

To those viewers accusing the director and screenwriter Robert Kirchhoff of bias in favor of the 7 (perhaps wrongly) accused men: yes, his sympathies for the 7 are palpable; yet both sides were allowed to speak and present strong arguments over the course of _Kauza Cervanová_. There is the memorable and impressive statement by a criminal investigator who says that perpetrators of heinous crimes are pretty frequently capable of thoroughly and sincerely (!) convincing themselves (!) of their innocence. There would then, consequently, be little value in results of lie detector tests.

For the "other side of the issue", viewers might turn to the 2004 Czech fictional movie _Bolero_ based on the Cervanová murder. It was directed by noted Czech cinematographer F. A. Brabec, and the well-known Czech screenwriter Markéta Zinnerová took the exactly opposite approach compared to Robert Kirchhoff: that the 7 men were in fact guilty as charged, and justifiably convicted. _Bolero_ met with mixed reviews.

To me, the "whodunnit" of the mystery is immaterial; _Kauza Cervanová_ is deeper than a whodunnit. It appears to me that either no one is guilty, or everyone is. (I lean towards the latter option, although the two seemingly contradictory statements might be construed as synonymous.) Where are the boundaries between personalities, the boundaries between "innocent" and "guilty" people? Aren't *separate personalities* of humans as such, illusionary? On this level -- the level of Jesus's "Let those without guilt cast the first stone" -- the distinction between the "guilty" and the "innocent" starts to blur. The question "Who is guilty?" starts to sound uncomfortable because, as Neale Walsch would say, "There is only one of us in the room."

_Kauza Cervanová_ is about how to deal with human life -- with terrible, unexpected blows that one may receive from human life when one least expects it. What do you do then? Can you absorb the blow, deflect it? Or will the blow *break* you, so that you are turned into a bodily and/or psychological ruin of a person, of your own earlier self? (Compare the 7 men when young and today.)

There are numerous memorable moments interspersed throughout _Kauza Cervanová_. Kirchhoff is phenomenal in picking the choicest quotes and soundbites from the treasure trove of his 8 years of search for material. See a priest saying that the entire human life (and all aspects and components of it) is *either* an absurdity, *or* a mystery -- there is no third option; or the simile used by a Middle-Eastern witness about the fox and speaking (or, rather, choosing not to speak) the truth.

The narration of _Kauza Cervanová_ is delightfully sketchy, yet (to me) never confusing. As an example, see Kirchhoff's decision to communicate a key statement by the former Czech(oslovak) Attorney General Motejl to the viewers only *indirectly*, despite having had Motejl available for an on-screen interview; the statement packs a heavier punch that way. An important witness is interviewed on the phone by Kirchhoff, and is so hazy and uncertain about the entire affair that no further comment by anyone is necessary. Finally, there are the brief glimpses of grotesque figures that are the present-day Slovak politicians: Attorney General Trnka, strutting away with a theatrical gesture; a smirk of relief on the face of a Slovak smalltown mayor accompanying the President of Slovakia for a photo op. You couldn't ask for better performances lampooning politicians if these were hired extras.

_Kauza Cervanová_, as all remarkable works of art, may ostensibly, on the first plane, be dealing with a specific murder case. Behind that, however, as all remarkable works of art, it says something generally applicable to human life -- about all viewers of the movie. To me, therefore, this documentary is not primarily about the 7 convicted men, nor even primarily about Slovakia or its (post-)Communist regime(s). It is a movie about human nature; it ultimately deals with the most general human issues, not a specific incident, era or country.