WWII continues to be a staple topic for Dutch filmmakers, but in her IFFR closer The Aviatrix of Kazbek, Ineke Smits subverts the form with a fantastical depiction of a true wartime story, she tells Nick Cunningham
The Aviatrix of Kazbek (De Vliegenierster van Kazbek), which world premieres at IFFR, tells the story of a revolt on the Dutch island of Texel, when Georgian soldiers turned on their German 'allies': an exercise that resulted in the deaths of over a thousand troops and civilians. It is also a love story, told mainly through the eyes of Marie, a teenage girl blossoming into full womanhood, who continually allows her dreams and imagination to carry her away on romantic flights of fancy. “I am a very romantic person,” Ineke Smits explains. “I make romantic movies, which are very unfashionable, but what can I do?”
Trapped in a dour Protestant household and engaged to the unimaginative Paul, Marie's life is transformed when a small contingent of exotic Georgians are billeted in her father's barn. A romantic link is soon formed between her and one of the soldiers, Goga, and the inevitable charges of collaboration are brought by the locals, before Marie chooses to play a decisive role in the Georgian revolt.
“I didn't want to make a historical reconstruction – that would have been really easy,” comments Smits, who invests within her film an audacious vibrancy and careless disregard for the conventions of the war genre. Instead, the tumultuous psychological changes Marie undergoes are depicted with a magical realist verve that allows butterflies to burst from tree trunks and the mountains of Kazbek to float on cumulus clouds. The aviatrix of Marie's imagination appears in a sumptuously-choreographed dance routine in the Georgian mountains.
“My films, even my documentaries, always deal with the power of imagination, and how wonderful it is that we human beings have the ability to fantasise and to dream,” Smits explains. “Imagination is a tool that enables us to survive or to deal with reality. I realise that there are certain things, thematically or visually, consciously or unconsciously, that I always do. It was pointed out to me the other day during a TV interview how shadows reappear in my films, quite often a different shape from the bodies that produce them. I do that in this film too. The more films you make, the clearer it becomes what you are after. I am not one of those directors who never look at the their films again. I study meticulously what I have done and draw lessons from it. My old films remind me of where I have come from and how I have developed.”
Smits explains how her main characters are painted meticulously, her ancillary characters with broader brush strokes. It is a style, she argues, that enables her more easily to present national characteristics within a story of such enormous national consequence. “I find that the Dutch in general are quite scared,” she observes. “They don't want to do things that will affect the future. We're a nation of cold winters where there is no food growing, so we keep our potatoes for the next day, whereas in the film the Georgians say 'why spoil your drunkenness tonight with the thought of a hangover tomorrow?' The way I constructed the characters was liking throwing a stone into a pond. The first ring is the main characters, real people with real feelings. The outer rings take on more the characteristics of these cultural groups rather than specific personalities.”
The film is book-ended with contemporary scenes in the Caucasian mountains which hint at a pleasingly romantic outcome, and the philosophical framework of the film is is expressed in the repeated refrain: “That's where the danger is, just where you think everything is beautiful.”
More about The Aviatrix of Kazbek here.