Review: "Lokis"

MAJEWSKI, Janusz (Dir.), “Lokis. Rekopis profesora Wittembacha” (1970), P.P. Film Polski.

Werewolf films are a dime a dozen; trust the Poles to give us a film about werebears.

There’s lots to like about this movie, especially from a bibliophilic point of view, and also for gamers trying to hook their players into scenarios. Let me just say right from the start that I don’t think that this film is a groundbreaking document; rather it has a series of really nice touches, grounded in a Nineteenth Century sensibility, that demonstrate a masterful grasp of the narrative form. Sadly, what this film doesn’t really do, is deliver any substantial scares.

Firstly, let me start by saying that the music for this movie was composed and conducted by Wojciech Kilar, the man who wrote the music for such films as “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992), “Death and the Maiden” (1994) and “The Ninth Gate” (1999). Anyone who is aware of his work on those films will understand me when I say that the soundtrack is superb. It delivers emotional peaks as required and lurks unobtrusively in the background while the plot unfolds. An excellent feature!

The story surrounds an academic German priest, Professor Pastor, who journeys into Poland to a remote stately home to examine a translation of theological writings into an obscure dialect. His goal is to write a lexicon of the language in order that missionary work amongst its speakers may be undertaken. He meets an aged Countess and her companions on the train – Julia and her companion, Miss Lemon - as he arrives at the nearby town and gains an open invitation to come and dine at her manor whilst working in the district.

Heading to the estate, he is ear-bashed by the cart driver about many strange local legends, including manifestations of the Devil – in the form of a tailless pike, clad in the “strange clothes” of the Germans – and other horrors. A rainstorm and a broken wheel sees the priest stranded in a small chapel: in the stormy night he hears yelling outside and, opening the church door, inadvertently scares away a drunken peasant by appearing from the dark entryway - damp, tailless and clad after the German fashion!

Eventually, he arrives at the demesne of the young Count Szemiot who, he is told, is suffering from migraines and cannot come to greet him. Instead, a servant gives him a guided tour and sees him safely ensconced in his room. From the window, the priest witnesses the arrival of Szemiot’s mother - who is mad and infirm - along with her private doctor, Froeber. Her distress is painful for him to watch as she is roughly manhandled from her carriage. Later, he meets the doctor at dinner, discovering him to be both indiscreet and in bad temper, longing to be far from what he considers to be a cultural backwater; during the meal, he is summoned to assist his charge who has thrown a fit, and he leaves with poor grace.

After dinner, the priest retires to his room only to see a bearded man hiding in a tree outside his window, obviously spying upon him. Summoning the servants, he is disturbed by their unwillingness to understand his concern, or to do anything about the matter, apart from closing the blinds. As it transpires, the figure in the tree is the young Count who meets the priest next morning over breakfast and apologises for alarming his guest.

The set-up is engrossing and thought-provoking. Filmed in that ‘no-motion’, soft-focus ‘Seventies style that feels distant and detached, we feel an odd disconnect with the events; given that much of what we’ve seen so far is unexplained and peculiar, this heightens our sense that the world is out of joint.

From here we are led deeper into the world of the Count Szemiot and his family: he yearns for the lovely Julia; he expresses weird philosophical points of view regarding the nature of evil and those who embrace it; he is misanthropic and detests animals with equal vehemence, and they respond to him in kind. Doctor Froeber, meanwhile, has descended from careful treatment of the Count’s mother to a regimen of casual torture, his interest in the case long past vaporised: in a moment of complete tactlessness he asks the priest if he thinks that euthanasia is a possible alternative. Left alone in the extensive library, the doctor reveals to Pastor an old sketchbook left behind by a visiting Italian artist: it reveals an incident regarding the Szemiot’s mother during a hunt, where she was dragged away by a bear and mauled. Freed by the shots fired by a drunken groom, she was discovered shortly thereafter to be pregnant and, upon the birth of her son the Count, she tried to break the child’s neck soon after its delivery.

I especially liked the way this backstory was revealed by means of the sketchbook. Whereas another director might have conjured a flashback, this device lent the already strange event an almost mythical quality, like a fairytale. The unfinished sketches and scribbles make the event hazy and unreal, hinting at the proceedings without being heavy-handed. After Professor Pastor sees the pictures, he starts to put two-and-two together – no matter how much it affronts his rational perspective – and then the doctor informs him that the book is kept hidden by the family who don’t wish outsiders to know the details of this accident. Having thus involved the priest in this indiscretion, Froeber almost titters on his way out of the room.

After this, we meet a crazy old witch who talks to a snake and tells the Count that the animals are prepared to name him their king but that the lovely Julia will never be his; Szemiot falls into a lovelorn depression and parades haphazardly on the castle battlements, dangerously close to the edge. Pastor, convinced that Szemiot is simply overthinking things, convinces him to attend a tea party at the Countess’ townhouse, there to declare his love to Julia and let the chips fall as they might. There is a metaphoric dance; some lustful stares and the next thing we know, the two are betrothed. All that remains is a wedding laden with bizarre local traditions (like slapping the bride’s face before she enters the church) and we fast-forward to the wedding night, which is heralded by a bitter fall of snow.

Over a reluctant nightcap with Froeber, the priest sees something fall from the window above; large animal tracks are discovered in the snow below, heading into the woods; a scream comes from the wedding chamber and the bride is discovered bleeding, mauled by some hideous beast. Of the groom there is no sign. Weeks of searching find no trace of him, and so Pastor heads home to Germany. As he boards a train, he sees a row of freshly killed animals lying next to the tracks waiting to be skinned; among them is a large bear. As the whistle shrills and the train departs, he – and also we – are left to ponder the implications.

Like I said, the shocks are light in this film. We almost know from the start what to expect here, but it’s the way that it plays out that is of interest. Although I saw early on where this was going, I was never bored by the unfolding events: this is a case where the manner of the telling is of greater importance than the point of the tale. Obviously, there are no actual scenes of bears rampaging across the countryside, but this only heightens the drama: at no point are we ever truly sure of what’s going on; the one rationale that we have is far-fetched at best and we instinctively try to deny that it is real, despite being inevitably dragged back to it. The early scene with the drunken peasant outside the chapel underscores this: we know that the peasant isn’t encountering the Devil; it’s just a few random particulars that fall together to play upon an old legend. Obviously something similar is going on here with the werebear...isn’t it?

Actually, the most disturbing thing about the film was its treatment of the animals that appear throughout: dogs are whipped, a scruffy gypsy’s bear is made to dance with a prod and the poor witch’s snake was almost throttled. And those animals alongside the train tracks at the end, including an otter, several mink, some wolves and the dead bear? All real; all dead. I guess that’s why filmmakers went to Eastern Europe to film in the ‘70s – no annoying laws about how to treat your animal cast.

This was a tight little story, let down by some overly distracting creative cinematography, distressed animals and far too much dancing (lo-o-o-ng dance sequences); I’m giving it three tentacled horrors.