[Marxism] NYT: The Comedy of Capitalism

["Sayan Bhattacharyya" <ok.president+marxmail@xxxxxxxxx>]

June 14, 2007
MOVIE REVIEW | 'CZECH DREAM'
The Comedy of Capitalism

<http://movies2.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/movies/15czec.html>

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Maybe you have to have been brought up in a formerly Communist country
to recognize and fully appreciate what might be called capitalist
propaganda. What does it mean? It entails promoting a starry-eyed
shop-till-you-drop ethos in a population accustomed to deprivation.
How easy that appetite is to stimulate is demonstrated in the cheeky
documentary "Czech Dream," whose creators, Vit Klusak and Filip
Remunda, two students at the Prague Film Academy, used state money to
stage an elaborate hoax.

They mounted an expensive advertising campaign trumpeting the 2003
grand opening in Prague of a fictitious new hypermarket (a kind of
Wal-Mart plus). Called the Czech Dream, it promised all the usual
wonders: unbelievably low prices, free gifts for the first customers
and the fantasy of finding everything you ever wanted in one place.
They went so far as to erect a 100-foot store facade in front of
scaffolding at the far end of a large meadow.

Consumers invited to submit names for the store came up with Amore,
Harmony, Easy Life, Oneness and Cornucopia. A soggy, incessantly heard
"We Are the World"-style theme song declared, "The world is yours, so
take it." The filmmakers were groomed to look like executives. A
cynical young Czech compares the concept of the Czech Dream to the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which he calls "a paid advertisement, a
mega-billboard stating that God is great." The most ingenious part of
the campaign was to whet consumer appetites by daring people not to
come.

But come they do: a herd of 2,000 charging across the meadow to
purchase a piece of the dream. When they discover they've been made
fools of, they accept this performance event with surprising
equanimity. There is a lot of grumbling but no riot. They get the
joke.

CZECH DREAM

Opens today in Manhattan.

Written (in Czech, with English subtitles) and directed by Vit Klusak
and Filip Remunda. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at
Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 87 minutes. This film
is not rated.

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