introtofilm

Meg GibsonThe Hand & Human Condition

I am like most people today. When I don’t want someone to come into my house, I shut the door, leaving him or her on the other side, and that is that. I express my wishes, and those wishes are granted respect by the intruder, who intrudes no more. What would I do if one of these intruders didn’t leave once I kicked them out? What if they came back in through the window, uninvited, and broke things I had given a lot of time and energy to create? What if they tried to inflict and force their will upon me? This question is addressed in Ruka (The Hand), the tale of a content Artist who faces oppression from an intrusive human Hand. In this film, Trnka uses expressionist elements to unravel a political allegory about the crushing of the human spirit under a totalitarian regime.

Artist. Gentle, independent, content. At first, Ruka may appear to be simply a delightful display of Trnka’s mastery as a puppeteer. Artist seems to breathe and live independent of a puppeteer’s hand, just as he lives in his house, wakes to birds singing, and cares for his plant, independent of any intervention from anyone. Artist becomes everyman in this representation; foremost, he is every-artist, asking for very little besides freedom of expression. Artist also becomes a Christ-type as he takes a voyage he does not want to take through an oppressive, mind-bending hell. His behavior does not immediately reveal the strength Artist has. Nor does it foreshadow that Artist will ultimately sacrifice himself at the hand of Hand. He is the one that seems meek and humble and even somewhat simple, especially as he seeks to defend his right to create a pot for his young plant. He politely tries to shoo the childishly snoopy Hand out of his house; he likes the way things are and Hand doesn’t respect his work or way of life. But the white-gloved hand doesn’t give up ever; he comes back repeatedly, with different media every time, escalating the urgency of his message. Hand tries the phone; Artist hangs up and dreams of his plant blooming into a beautiful rose. A particularly striking moment occurs when a television is pulled out of a box and an expressionistic stream of propagandist images of hands pull the audience and Artist in.

The images of the hands are presented in a montage which progresses to reach alarming conclusions. It starts off reasonably enough, showing the familiar hands of the statues Lady Justiceand the Statue of Liberty, both beautiful representations of freedom. Soon it picks up speed and shows more violent images: a boxing gloved-hand, a hand holding a gun, an accusatory hand pointing, a shadow puppet, and most striking, an iron fist. Watching this montage made me think about what hands are and what they come to represent. “Hands are one of the symbolically expressive parts of the body. In Hebrew, yad, the most common word for “hand,” is also used metaphorically to mean power, strength, might (see William Wilson, Old Testament Word Studies [1978], 205). Thus, hands signify power and strength” (from a talk given by Elder W. Craig Zwick, General Conference Report, October 2003). It suddenly becomes very striking that the forceful antagonist is a hand; this was the moment when I realized there was more going on here than a beautiful puppet show.

The intensity of the film picks up immediately after the television sequence. Just as it must be when a totalitarian government takes over, things become more urgent and more oppressed. Hand now appears cloaked in dark gray, no longer prancing around accidentally knocking pots over and annoying Artist while trying to get him to create a hand statue instead of a pot for his plant. Now he is more in the form of a fist, trying to grab Artist. Finally, Hand appears in the flesh, tantalizing Artist with an erotic dance. Since Hand cannot appeal to the mind of Artist, he goes after the “natural man,” his carnal-ness—his sensuality. And this is what gets Artist roped into the strings; now he is a marionette, played by a self-praising Hand. Now he has lost control of his fate . . .. Thrust into prison, separated from the beauties of his home-life and away from that silly task of making a pot for his plant, he is “free” to focus on the sole task of creating a statue of Hand, under the direction of none other than Hand.

The preceding makes two interesting points that deserve a closer look. First, there’s the statement Trnka makes by having Artist’s sensuality be his downfall. Is this a criticism? All I can say for certain is that if Artist had not given in to his urges and moved toward the tempting hand, he would not have been marionetted.

Secondly . . . has Artist really lost control of his fate? The answer is not entirely clear. For one thing, he now has strings; he doesn’t have control of his own motor functions. But he still has his dreams; he has maintained control of his mind. Why else would he risk his life to escape the strings and the prison? Artist is lucky, in a way. There have been many people who live under totalitarian regimes, even intellectuals and artists, who lost control of their own thoughts. This became especially true in the USSR under Stalin. “The cult of personality” was a necessary perpetuation of the worship given to saints and tsars by the Russian people with a new direction—Stalin. To run a successful totalitarian government, the creation of emotional bonds is a crucial part because when people adore, they submit. The following comes from a poem written by the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko:

O great Stalin, O leader of the peoples,

Thou who broughtest man to birth.

Thou who fructifies the earth,

Thou who restorest to centuries,

Thou who makest bloom the spring,

Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords…

Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou,

Sun reflected by millions of hearts (from his book Precocious Autobiography, 1963).

Those individuals who were legitimately fooled and bought into this image of Stalin were happily ignorant, or perhaps just fooling themselves as much as Stalin was fooling himself into believing all these tributes to his greatness. Artist does not fall into any of this, even when he is crowned with a laurel wreath and donned with pretty medals. As soon as he is able, he breaks his strings, tears off the mocking accolades and knocks the statue over, running as fast as he can to his own work.

Another expressionistic element is apparent throughout, but especially in the scenes with Hand: diagonal lines. Diagonal lines are an interesting design device. They are used to suggest action or chaos as opposed to the calm tranquility of horizontal lines and sturdy strength of vertical lines. The diagonal lines in Ruka shatter Artist’s orderly, happy life. He walks upright across horizontal floors; Hand is constantly moving, his fingers forming angles to each other. Artist is lured by the diagonal dance of a naked hand. The strings cause Artist to move in diagonally rather than his previous upright motions. His prison bars are diagonal. Things in his home are turned to uncomfortable angles as Hand uses more force to “convince” Artist. As the action accelerates, the angles become more present; soon, everything is chaotic and fast. The use of the diagonal lines becomes expressive of not only what is going on around Artist at the imposition of Hand, but how he feels about that imposition. Even the music is more angular at the climax; Hand becomes a black fist, pounding through walls and ceilings to destroy Artist (and his little plant too!) once and for all.

Why is the plant so important to Artist? It’s what he works for. He places all his hopes and dreams on what that plant can become. It becomes his “transcendental female;” something that radiates heavenly beauty that requires his care, and in the end helps him to rise above the foul mind-washing games of Hand. It’s an interesting choice to use a rose; it seems like it shouldn’t be big enough for Hand to be concerned about. But totalitarianism cannot have any competitors, however small they may be. That plant is going to become a flower soon. What if it reminds Artist what life was like before hand? No chances can be taken. Trnka succeeds very well in making this point about totalitarianism by using something as simple as a flower and a pot. It’s remarkable that people get so passionate, for better or worse, about something as simple as that. Just as it is the little things in life that bring us the greatest pleasures in life, it is the ability to darken those little things that empowers others to overtake the human existence.

As soon as Ruka was released, everyone saw it was clearly Trnka’s criticism of the totalitarian regime that took over his homeland of Czechoslovakia in 1949. By 1965, the Czech people were really trying to take a stand. Some give credit to Ruka for Prague Spring, a promising season when it seemed the people would rise above. A year later came perhaps the greatest irony of Ruka; Trnka passed away, leaving Ruka as his final work. Despite the biting nature of the piece, Trnka was buried and recognized by the state as the great artist that he was, just as Artist was buried, with pomp and honor from the Hand of his oppressors. Soon after his death, Ruka was locked away into vaults; Edward Dutka stated it best–“A seventeen minute long puppet film intimidated the unlimited power of the Totalitarian State” (taken from “Jiri Trnka: Walt Disney of the East!” from Animation World Magazine, issue 5.04, July 2000). Ruka takes on transcendent elements itself. It is his rose; it bloomed after Trnka’s death, just as Artist’s rose bloomed after his.

About twenty-five years after Ruka’s realization, the CSSR (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic) once again became an independent, people-run country. The final days of totalitarianism were counted down by students and artists who had had enough oppression. They led strikes, which were soon exposed by the long-oppressed television and radio stations. Combined, it was the forces of art that led to the downfall of one element ruling all the inhabitants of a nation. In Ruka, Artist is alone, which adds an existential dimension to the film. Surely if he had found other artists they could have defeated Hand. But Artist never even comes into contact with anyone else. My conclusion is that Artist’s present struggle is personal; it is internal, not external. It is an expression of Trnka’s inner feelings about being an artist under the totalitarian regime. That is why Artist is alone; his mind is his own territory to be ruled as he desires.

There are still regimes like hand in our modern world; how do we overcome them? It’s easy as to think that there is nothing really we can do, an attitude that we need to learn to overcome in its own oppressive right. Ruka plants in my heart a desire to help my oppressed brothers and sisters somehow. By effectively showing what Artist goes through with elements of expressionism, I feel an emotional connection that won’t let me rest easy. As illustrated in Ruka, the greatest perpetuator of oppression is inactivity. Oppression exposes itself when it has to force its hand. If we submit willingly, it’s hardly oppression at all. Despite the wonderful freedoms of the United States and others today, there is still a lurking oppressive attitude. How can we overcome it? By tuning in to those voices crying out from underneath the fist. We can give them a voice when we are willing to be listeners. When we accept all cultures and peoples, we stop oppression from spreading. We need to be careful of totalitarian attitudes as well as regimes. Steven Kreis said, “Now that ten years have gone by [Stalin died in 1953], I realize that Stalin’s greatest crime was not the arrests and the shootings he ordered. His greatest crime was the corruption of the human spirit” (taken from Stalin and the Cult of Personality; http://www.historyguide.org/europe/cult.html). Expressionism was the best way for Trnka to explain to outsiders and define for insiders what total oppression is like. He used the elements artfully in Ruka to this end as well as to show the strength of the human spirit.

Helpful Sources

The following were used to help me collect my thoughts and increase my understanding of the historical/emotional context of Ruka. All quoted works have been cited within the paper, but are once again cited here.

1. ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.04 - JULY 2000. Jiri Trnka — Walt Disney Of The East! by Edgar Dutka. http://www.awn.com/mag/issue5.04/5.04pages/dutkatrnka2.php3

2. http://www.aspectspositions.org/essays/kocian.html

3. http://www.rembrandtfilms.com/jiritrnka.htm

4. http://www.dvdreview.com/fullreviews/the_puppet_films_of_jiri_trnka.shtml

5. http://www.historyguide.org/europe/cult.html article by Steven Kreis

6. And finally, a modern voice against a culturally totalitarian attitude. I wanted to include this because I think it’s interesting and something that I would not have thought about as much at the beginning of the semester, at least in terms of structure.

“Powerless (say what you want)” by Nelly Furtado

Paint my face in your magazines

Make it look whiter than it seems

Paint me over with your dreams

Shove away my ethnicity

Burn every notion that I may have a flame inside to fight

And say just what is on my mind

Without offending your might

Cuz this life is too short to live it just for you

But when you feel so powerless what are you gonna do

So say what you want

Say what you want

I saw her face outside today

Weatherworn, looking all the rage

They took her passion and her gaze and made a poster

Now it’s moccasins we sport

We take the culture and contort

Perhaps only to distort what we are hiding

Hey you, the one outside, are you ever gonna get in, get in

Hey you, the one that don’t fit in, how ya, how ya gonna get in

Hey you, the one outside, are you ever gonna get in with your

Broken teeth, broken jaw, broken mojo

Yeah, this life is too short to live it just for you

But when you feel so powerless, what are you gonna do

Say what you want