‘Funeral’: Stark Czech Portrait

It doesn’t take long to understand why Czech director Zdenenek Sirovy’s starkly beautiful and utterly relentless “Funeral Ceremony” (at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater tonight only at 8) was banned for 20 years. Shot in high-contrast black-and-white against wintry landscapes, the film is harsh as it looks. A man named Jan Chladil (Josef Kroner) lies dying and makes one final request of his wife Matylda (Jaroslava Ticha: that he be buried in the family vault.

That doesn’t sound like too much to ask, but his wish has the effect of a stone cast upon a still pond. As the film flashbacks to the ‘50s, we see Jan, an abusive drunkard, regarded by his own stoic wife as “sinful and evil,” and Matylda being forcibly removed from a farm that belonged to her family.

What Sirovy and his co-writer Eva Kanturkova have done is to hold a mirror to their countrymen who were not prepared to see themselves in such an uncompromising light in the tragic wake of the 1968 Prague Spring. But, in a stroke irony, “Funeral Ceremony” finally was seen by the Czech public on Nov. 16, 1989--the eve of revolution.

Sirovy, who was not able to direct for seven years after he made “Funeral Ceremony,” will be present at tonight’s showing. Sponsoring the screening is the newly formed Czechoslovak Institute and UCLA’s International Student Center. Information: (213) 825-3384, 208-4587.