Satire is one of those genres that are not easily definable, and usually adhere to the principle of “you know it when you see it” – and there is generally a misconception that it always needs to be funny, or contain an element of overt humour, which is certainly not the case for many of the great satires of the past, especially those that were produced under oppressive systems. For many satirists, telling stories that were even vaguely critical of specific ideological beliefs or conventions was not only discouraged, but often life-threatening, and few artists know this better than Milan Kundera, who was exiled from his native Czechoslovakia as a result of his writings, which were seen as derogatory and contradictory to the ideals of the Soviet Union and its fervent belief in communism as a political and social concept, to the point where those who spoke out against it were brutally punished. This forms the foundation of The Joke (Czech: Žert), in which director Jaromil Jireš collaborates with Kundera in adapting his novel of the same title, which relays the story of Ludvík Jahn, a formerly promising young communist who falls victim to the draconian policies of the government after an innocent joke causes him to be expelled from the party, and put through gruelling corrective training, under the watchful eye of a masochistic commander who is tasked with reconfiguring the minds of these corrupted young men who have drifted away from the party line, and thus pose an enormous threat to the wellbeing of their country and its cherished political beliefs. A bitterly funny and caustic satire that combines political drama with blistering social commentary, The Joke is a daring and provocative work that remains deeply unsettling and profoundly moving, over half a century since its original release, which is not an accomplishment that should ever be underplayed, especially when we situate it to a very specific place and time in the history of global cinema.

The Czech New Wave is one of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century, with nearly every film to come out of this formerly Soviet nation being important in some significant way, and several directors who started their careers in these films would go on to be formative members of the cinematic culture, laying the foundation for the European arthouse, which would eventually become the most singularly important influence on contemporary cinema, much more than anything being produced in Hollywood at the time, at least amongst those who valued the very precise nature of complex storytelling. By the time he made The Joke, Jireš was established as a vital name in this movement – Valerie and Her Week of Wonders immediately became an arthouse sensation and brought forward many imitators (retaining a strong presence in contemporary surrealist art), and his other films were celebrated as masterful examinations of political and social unease in the Soviet Union. However, The Joke may be his most important work on a conceptual level, his collaboration with Kundera yielding fascinating results as they brought his beautiful but challenging novel to the screen, which was certainly not an easy task. Every artistic movement has clear contenders for the pioneering work, even if they are occasionally a few titles contending for the title of being the first – but very few contain a work that is discernably the last, mainly because these movements tend to dissipate and go in their direction, either slowly fading away as new conventions infiltrate the existing ideas, or they combine with other genres, often remaining a part of the culture, at least stylistically. The Joke is widely considered to be the film that signified the end of the Czech New Wave, which we can attribute to the fact that this was a movement built on ideology and philosophy more than anything else, and it often depended on the social and cultural milieux to produce new stories – and considering the rate at which the system was changing at the time, it’s not a surprise that this was the film that brought an end to a very specific movement – it was certainly not the last Czech film to explore the dangers of communism, but it was the final time it was delivered in this way, making it appear to be a swan song to a movement that was fighting for its existence at the time, and put away by a truly brilliant film that serves as a summation of all of its boldest and most daring ideas.

The distinction between satires created by those who simply want to critique a specific concept or ideology, and those formed under oppressive social and cultural systems is very clear, with the biggest differences coming in the expression of humour, and the level of anger – both of them exist in tandem, many of the more interesting satires of the past oscillating between the two to varying degrees. Often we find that the angrier the narrative, the more overt the humour is – and The Joke is a film that may seem stifled and overly serious at the outset, but gradually finds space for a more darkly comical depiction of the life of someone whose only crime is telling a joke, which was deemed unacceptable in the eyes of the Soviet government, and thus resulted in two decades of punishment designed to not only force him to see the error of his ways, but also irrevocably break his spirit, the last remaining vestige that he is way able to maintain after years of harrowing torture, both physical and psychological. It seems almost bewildering that The Joke is a comedy – some may argue that it couldn’t be further from such a categorization, especially since there is nothing distinctly funny about the film as a whole, much of the humour coming from situation and circumstance, where we laugh at the sheer madness that propelled this social system, which often felt too absurd to be real. Kundera knew far too well the realities that afflicted his home country (even if he has subsequently rejected his Czech heritage, likely a result of having his citizenship revoked for nearly half a century), and he and Jireš so delicately constructed a riveting and provocative elegy to a specific time and place, and the people who populated it. A lot of the humour is concealed under layers of very dense, complex commentary that can be impenetrable for those of us who don’t have the most extensive knowledge of the period and its political beliefs. However, Jireš makes it all very accessible, the dialogue containing enough detail to facilitate a profound understanding of all the details, delivered in an efficient and rapid-fire manner that never leaves any room for ambiguity, at least not the intentional sort.

Josef Somr was one of the most instantly recognisable actors to come out of Czechoslovakia during this period of profound artistic ingenuity, being featured in several iconic films produced around this time. His best-known work is undeniably Closely Watched Trains (which was directed by Jiří Menzel, a contemporary of Jireš, and an equally important figure in the movement), and he led a long career that defined this period and beyond, lending his talents to several tremendous and important productions. The Joke is a very different kind of performance for him – his character of Ludvík Jahn is present throughout the story, which takes place in alternating periods (oscillating between the “present day” in the late 1960s, and the period in the 1940s when he was a student coming into his political belief system), and despite being well over the age of a traditional university student, we never doubt Somr’s performance for even a moment, his performance being complex and spellbinding in a truly surprising way. A film like The Joke doesn’t depend too heavily on its actors, since they are essentially pawns hired to enact the scenes put together by the writers and directors who were the real authorial voices behind the movement – but despite being just a visual and aural vessel for their story, Somr is truly captivating, playing the part with a quiet intensity that shows a level of subtlety that fits perfectly into the overall tone of the film, which is built on the quieter moments of character-based humour, which are in turn used to balance out the very bleak imagery we see reflected throughout the film. We don’t often pay attention to acting in films like The Joke, since it seems almost incidental to the plot – but the gravitas with which the performances by this cast (which include strong supporting work by Jana Dítětová, Luděk Munzar and Jaroslava Obermaierová) create a vibrant ensemble that are all united in their desire to tell this story and represent the people who weren’t so lucky to escape this cruel system.

The Joke is a fascinating film for several reasons. On a purely cinematic level, this is a film produced under perilous circumstances, an anti-communist manifesto filmed near the very people being satirized throughout the story, and the ones who could have so easily destroyed the lives of many of those involved, especially since there was a genuine case for the artists behind this film defaming the country and its ideologies. This takes us to the political and social undercurrents that inspired the film – it is difficult to make a satire without a strong body of ideas that need to be critiqued. This film offers something valuable to the conversation around communism – it isn’t explicitly against the system as a whole (not because it is in favour of it, but rather because any work that aims to be a definitive analysis of as broad a system is immediately setting itself up for failure), but rather chooses a few segments that it can effectively critique, and in the process implying the corruption that sits right at the core of the government and its undying belief in the virtue of a system that is causing far more harm than it is good. Kundera is a daring writer who took many risks throughout his career, and while he may be most celebrated for the achingly beautiful prose he put together in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, his most provocative work on a purely intellectual level will always be The Joke, which was translated to the screen with poignancy, complexity and layers of subversive humour, which create a truly mesmerizing and deeply captivating narrative that ventures deep into European history, and extracts only the most intriguing elements that are woven into the story as it pursues more complex truths that lurk in a very disturbing but fascinating depiction of the past.