“Sparta”: dark humor against the backdrop of Nazi ideology

The meaning of “the world” – to see

Abrasive and devastating filmmaker with whom Swedish Ruben Ostlund (square2017, without filter2022) It seems that the Boy Scout, an honorary Austrian in this regard, Ulrich Seidl ends up revealing Sparta The diptych, the first part of which we discovered, Riminiin November 2022. Richie Bravo, The Crown Prince has been For a third-year German tour operator, he met his abandoned son on the way back to an Italian seaside resort. A beautiful film where vitriol and tenderness mingle.

It may be more problematic around the armholes, Sparta – No luxury for a pitcher – is the story of the previous brother, with pedophilic tendencies, who opened a youth judo club in Romania under the Greek name of Sparta. It should be noted that, to set the right tone for the atmosphere and Seidl’s black humor, their father hums Nazi songs over yellow floral wallpaper in his nursing home throughout the two films…

The film opens in France after a weekly campaign Der Spiegel In 2022, he wanted to prove that Ulrich Seidl himself abused, at least morally, the Romanian children who were filmed in his film. The investigations carried out for this purpose, both judicial and corporate, both in Romania and in Austria, because we did not find anything like a deviation, so we can welcome the film more calmly. Although “quietly” is undoubtedly written a little fast. Because discomfort – however intelligent and productive – is the feeling that clings to the viewer’s skin when discovering this film.

A remote village in Transylvania

Starting with its main character, Ewald, a calm forty-year-old but bordering on anxiety, a tall, quiet cocky man with a falsetto voice who you’ll never know if he’s going to shake your hand. Split your skull with a cut. So Ewald, who fled Austria for an unknown reason, settles in Romania, frequents a pleasant local bartender, but in his presence suffers from erectile problems.

Because he also likes to play with children, he ends up being kicked out of his girlfriend’s apartment and unexpectedly opens a judo club for teenagers in a particularly remote village in Transylvania, near what Ewald’s father’s mentor, a certain Adolf H. as the geographical area of ​​the lower races.

So here we are in the story, which slowly begins to smack of Ewald’s nascent pedophilic tendencies (boy showers, contact sports, photos of his shield that he flashes at night, etc.) and the Nazi ideology that dates The depths of the German age (body nudity, manly exercises, Greco-Aryan ideal, subjugation of subordinate peoples).