SLNKO V SIETI (DIE SONNE IM NETZ) (1962/63)
Inhalt - Synopsis
Im slowakischen Bratislava warten die 15-jährige Bela und ihr etwas älterer Freund Fajolo auf dem Dach eines Wohnhauses auf eine Sonnenfinsternis, doch es ist bewölkt und nichts zu sehen. Belas Bruder Milo erzählt der blinden Mutter dennoch, wie schön alles aussieht. Eines Tages entdeckt Fajolo eine alte Fischerhütte auf einem Ponton, die zu seiner Zuflucht wird. Das Verhältnis zwischen ihm und Bela ist angespannt und nach einem Streit meldet sich Fajolo zu einer Ernte-Brigade, wo er die hübsche Jana kennenlernt. Während seiner Abwesenheit trifft sich Bela mit Peto. Fajolo schreibt einen glühenden Liebesbrief an Bela, die ihn Peto vorliest. Dabei sonnen sie sich auf dem Ponton, den auch Peto inzwischen entdeckt hat. Als Fajolo nach seiner Rückkehr von diesem Vertrauensbruch erfährt, ist er tief verletzt. Am Ende stehen Milo, Bela und ihre blinde Mutter vor dem Ponton im ausgetrockneten Flußbett. Während sie über die Holzbretter gehen, erzählt Milo von der Schönheit des Pontons und des Flusses.
In Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, 15-year-old Bela and her friend Fajolo wait on the roof of an apartment house for a solar eclipse. Although it is cloudy and there is nothing to see, Bela’s brother Milo tells his blind mother how beautiful everything looks. One day Fajolo discovers an old fisher’s hut on a pontoon, and begins using it as his hideout. His relationship with Bela is tense and after a fight, when Fajolo is sent by the authorities to work on a harvest brigade, he meets beautiful Jana. During his absence Bela gets involved with Peto, who has also discovered the pontoon. Fajolo writes a passionate letter to Bela, who reads it to Peto while they sunbathe on the pontoon. When Fajolo finds out about this betrayal he is deeply hurt. Later, as Milo, Bela and their blind mother walk across the creaky wooden planks near the pontoon at the parched river, Milo describes the beauty of the pontoon and the river.
Zeitgenössische Kritiken:
THE SUN IN A NET explores the romantic attachments of student and amateur photographer Oldrich “Fajolo”
Fajták (Marián Bielik) to his hometown love Bela Blažejová (Jana Beláková) and
to Jana (Oľga Šalagová), a lover whom he meets during a summer job on a collective farm. This
lovers’ triangle provides the film with several oppositions: town and country, intelligentsia and worker, collective
and personal truth, reality and representation – all ultimately pointing towards the distinction between truth and
lie. THE SUN IN A NET, however, offers no clear resolution of the issues at stake, instead it insists that viewers piece
it together for themselves.
One of the first striking features of THE SUN IN A NET is its alinear narrative structure,
which contrasts with the linear narrative structure dominant in socialist realism. THE SUN IN A NET contains ruptures in
temporality that take the form of flashbacks and fantasy sequences, and points of narrative perspective that are ambiguous
in source. Narrative perspective shifts constantly between sequences clearly marked as representations of individual
experience and of objectively unscripted shots of “life-as-it-is” to extremely subjective sequences clearly
marked as memories. While these subjective sequences fly in the face of the socialist realist prerogative that film reveal
objective truth (in practice, government-mandated propaganda), the unscripted sequences also tread on taboo territory
because they have no explicit, plot-driving function: they are dashes of local color, ambiguous in meaning and anathema
to socialist-realism.
Alex Golden
THE SUN IN A NET was made at the onset of increasing relaxation of communist control and the enforcement of socialist
realism in
Symbolic details are used throughout the film to convey the polarity between life under communism and the possibility of life
without communism. [...] The most prevalent symbolic details in the film are the contrasting shots of light and darkness, and
the shots of hands. At a time when abstraction was discouraged, if not totally suppressed, these ambiguous images acquired
enormous power. By playing with the disparity between light and darkness, the film suggests that there is something dark about
communism, which blocks out the light – and truth. Many citizens in
Uher pushed the boundaries of what was permissible under socialist
realism by mixing the socially acceptable with the taboo in this film, standard shots of mandated voting with shots of teenagers
making out. This was a breakthrough because love, especially physical attraction, had been marginalized in art; it was an
individual – not a collective – response and state of being that did not deliver a pro-communist lesson to the
whole of society. Perhaps the most radical message in THE SUN IN A NET was the idea that lying was humane. Bela and her
brother lie to their mother about the weather and her surroundings to satisfy her curiosity and to give her comfort and
contentment. Communists had repeatedly accused the former “bourgeoisie” (that is, democrats) and intelligentsia
of lying and deceit, and earlier films contrasted them with truthful communist officials. By showing some lies as potentially
justified, THE SUN IN A NET turned the tables on one of the recurring themes in socialist realist art.
Several scenes in the film were obviously naughty and intended to challenge existing taboos. Perhaps the most blatant examples
are the shots of the youth volunteers working on the farm in their underwear. Uher was able to film their glistening,
half-naked, sweaty bodies precisely because he showed them in the act of doing voluntary communist labor. This was pure
manipulation on Uher’s part: labor and skin shots in the same scene.
Jasmine Pogue
Reviews on Štefan Uhers »The Sun in a Net«
KinoKultura: Special Issue 3: Slovak Cinema (Dezember 2005)
[www.kinokultura.com/specials/3/slovak.shtml]