Les petites marguerites

Chytilova surpasses even the genial Jiri Menzel in her blissful critique of the pieties and austerities associated with the Czech Stalinist regime under President Husak. DAISIES is an exercise in revolutionary modernism, anarch-dadaist in spirit and form. 21 deputies objected in parliament to the extravagant waste of food in the film, and Chytilova had to defend her film on communist-moral grounds: i.e. the two female protagonists (Marie 1 Jitka Cerkova, Marie 2 Ivana Karbanova) were spoilt brats to be condemned as so much waste-matter in the body politic of the workers' state. But we know that they are feminist anarchists, living (in terms of the plot narrative) off silly old men who buy them dinners, and (in terms of the poetic texture of the film) calling everything into question with the unquenchable brio of cartoon characters (they eat even photographs of food from glossy magazines). We, the audience, are happily infected (even today in the new millennium) by the blessed spirit of nihilism Chytilova has conjured up in those dangerous and exhilarating days of the Prague Spring. First there was Kafka (AMERIKA), then there was Hasek (THE GOOD SOLDIER SVEJK), and then there was Vera Chytilova. DAISIES is in my top ten films ever made.