Daisies (2022)

Waste of time

I wanted to but couldn't!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Over the course of the playful and influential Czech New Wave, very few female filmmakers added to the constant cannon fire of creativity coming from Czech cinema at the time. However, Vera Chytilova, who was basically a totally lone voice in the trend of radical Czech New Wave films, remains one of the movements most notable and brilliant filmmakers, and her excellent experimental comedy 'Daisies' is among the two or three most iconic purely Czech New Wave films. On my second watching, various thing stuck out to me as being particularly fantastic. Firstly and foremostly, the movie is entertaining beyond belief and, despite being a film w/so slim a runtime, feels even shorter than the unfortunately brief 74 minutes in which it is in the viewer's company. I also loved the use of constantly changing color, much of the film is tinted, while the rest oft has very bright, eye popping cinematography. I also appreciate the totally anarchic and rebellious nature the film carelessly flaunts around w/humor and vigor. It's so intentionally offensive to the uptight, largely patriarchal, and authoritarian society of prudes the film satirizes w/a smile that I fell in love with practically every second of it. It's a picaresque rollicking feminist romp that is as sexy as it is surreal and as daring and dangerous as it is beautiful and brilliant.

"Daisies" is the sort of film that they really only made in the 1960s and 70s and which 'intelligent' people love. It's an artsy film that is completely absurd nonsense and it's like a primer for filmmakers on how NOT to make a movie...and folks like the author of "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" enjoy. I noticed that most of the reviews were by folks who enjoyed the movie and thought it brilliant...I just thought it stole about 75 minutes of my life.The script for the film is pretty much non-existent. Instead, two young women act like real jerks and bounce from one setting to another with little, if any, coherent rhyme or reason. They go on dates with older men and behave like pigs, set fires, blow bubbles, annoy everyone around them, interrupt night club acts, take baths together, talk INCESSANTLY and pretty much think they are the two most clever folks on the planet. To me, it's like watching a couple 20-somethings behave like they are 6 year-olds and the effect is really annoying.So should you see this film? Well, if you've seen and enjoyed absurdist films like "Buffet Froid" or "Pierrre le Fou" or like taking LSD and then watching television test patterns, by all means give the 'film' a try. As for me, life is too short to waste seeing crap like this. The only possible good I can see with this film is that it obviously annoyed the repressive Czechoslovakian government when it debuted and it was labeled as 'depicting the wanton'. I would have described it as 'depicting the stupid'.

Ideologically, Sedmikrasky still makes sense. More so than ever, in fact. Designed as a feminist act of rebellion against patriarchal political systems, there's a lot to say for it when such systems are on the rise again. Now that so-called strong willed men are elected to office (or otherwise just grabbing such positions for themselves) around the globe, it's no surprise women's rights, hard fought and well earned, are slowly but surely diminished, even in democratic territories. So why not re-release a movie that fought for female independence fifty years back? Maybe because it is dated as heck in all other regards, for one thing.Sedmikrasky deals with two young women tired of being told what to do by old men and turning the tables on them by questioning everything taken for granted and stopping to adhering to social rules. That sounds pretty hardcore, but the eventual acts of rebellion ultimately prove rather tame. They start by luring cuckolds into dates and humiliating them in public by acting like spoiled brats and messing with their food (a lot!). Soon, things get a bit more serious when they add burglary to their nefarious behavior. Still, that's about it. And all of it is executed in a subversively childish manner, which makes it hard to take seriously fifty years down the road, as we've seen much worse in cinema since. Though we can sympathize with rebels attacking an oppressive system, these two women are mostly just absurdly annoying, making for a good 73 minutes that prove hard to sit through.What's worse, at least for general audiences, avant-gardist director Very Chytilova applies some mindbogglingly experimental cutting and photography, which makes for a wholly inaccessible movie. Everything is overly stylized, as if filming a dream. What's a modern audience to make of all this weirdness? Movie buffs and art lovers at least will appreciate the constant switching between colour palettes, the abrupt editing and the odd camera angles, not to mention the historical context which makes this film a classic in its own right, a prime example of its tempestuous zeitgeist. But without bearing all that in mind, little remains to provoke thoughts or aspire the latest generation of feminists, aside from good intentions.

This movie is a trip! Daisies was created in an avant-garde era in which artist were experimenting with abstract music, painting, photography, etc. Furthermore, this movie depicts a feminists perception of the world, specifically men. The first time I watched this film I walked out because it was too far out there for me. But watching it again two years later with a friend and analyzing it made the film much more enjoyable. There are subtle scenes in the film that give the viewer a glimpse of what the director was trying to get through to the audience. For instance, about half-way through the film the main actresses, Marie I and Marie II, begin to chop-up various foods shaped as male genitalia and proceed to eat them. Furthermore, Marie I receives a phone call from a male "companion" in which the traditional male-to-female roles are reversed. In order to get the most out of this movie, try and ask yourself the bigger question..."What is the director trying to tell me?" Rather than, "What the hell is going on?" All-in-all...good film and I highly recommend it.