Directed by Věra Chytilová. Written by Věra Chytilová, Ester Krumbachová, and Pavel Juráček
The world’s a war machine, says Věra Chytilová as she opens Daisies with shots of machinery chugging away and cuts it up with clips of fighter planes blowing up the earth below, explosions made impersonal by distance. We’re not only setting fire to it all, we don’t even seem all that invested in the havoc we wreak.
The world’s in a tailspin, it’s plain to see, says Maria I (Jitka Cerhová) and Marie II (Ivana Karbanová) so why should they sit around, be good little women, and play by an unorderly world’s arbitrary rules?
So begins a rampage of impropriety as they run amok filling up on food and booze and shedding notions of “civilized behavior” as expected by men in particular. They go on dates with stuffy older men, making suitors third wheels; in a glorious bit of juxtaposition, they listen to a message from a man they claim to not know the name of as he tells of how in love he is with one of them, and Chytilová’s camera remains fixed on a pair of scissors cutting up a sausage. Outside of the dating pool, they drink themselves under the table at nightclubs, harass outraged patrons; they become children, taking gender expectations in their hands and wring them out to the point of absurdity.
That’s essentially it: Daisies is a 75-minute long provocation by Věra Chytilová that’s a lot of fun if you didn’t also sense the frustration beneath it all. It’s beyond thumbing one’s nose, this circus, and the two girls resemble two index fingers standing ramrod straight in a mocking salute for a society looking in through the screen.
Maria I and Maria II’s shenanigans are that of unruly children, and the accompanying script is close to slam poetry, more centered around expressive phrases than elucidating dialogue. What unfolds does fall into a familiar groove quickly, especially as Daisies requires a studious rewatch to parse the sentences the Marias let slip amidst the havoc. Is there sense to be made? Or are the fragmented pieces delivered in sing-song lilt just another way the world’s spinning off its axis?
Happily, Chytilová’s visual storytelling is a radical act of filmmaking that doesn’t waste a single moment not engaging you. Every molecule of what’s on-screen sings with the energy of the unexpected and unconnected. Closer to a guitar riff than a melody, Chytilová’s editing and composition is an unbound thrill, as she plays with textures, patterns, styles and pacing to evoke the idiosyncratic feeling running through Daisies.
Cerhová and Karbanová also prove themselves comedic dynamite, throwing it back to silent film slapstick with some physical comedy and expressive facework that’ll make any clown jealous. Daisies is funny, spellbinding were it not for how often it jolts you, and bolstered by a message to the madness. Wild flowers will bloom. How out of place they look depends on what you build around them.
Mikkel Frederiksen 