30 | 1.5 stars | D+
Director: Klaus Härö
Cast: Märt Avandi, Hendrik Toompere, Ursula Ratasepp
Synopsis: A young Estonian fencer flees the Soviet secret police and lands a job in his homeland as a physical education coach.
Genre: Drama
Key awards: Academy Awards – nominee for Best Foreign Language Film
Runtime: 98 minutes
Languages: Estonian, Russian
Singapore rating: PG
The Fencer, if viewed from the perspective of a cosy family wanting to inculcate in its kids the values of individualism and liberal democracy, works well. It features a reserved protagonist possibly deeply affected by his wartime past, his beautiful romantic interest, and other little children with all the desired attributes of perseverance, determination, and innocence. It also has Communists.
Märt Avandi plays the role of Endel Keller, a fictionalisation of the real-life fencer and a soldier formerly under Nazi Germany command. He is on the run from the Soviets, who are determined to hunt down their former enemies – mostly Estonian men who fought on the opposing side during World War II. Keller changes his surname to Nelis, flees big-city Leningrad, and seeks work in a rural town (Haapsalu) where he hopes to evade capture by maintaining a low profile.
The gymnasium he works at allocates him the role of sports teacher, and Nelis chooses skiing as the winter sport for the children. But, as per the traumatic rule of Soviet collectivisation, their ski equipment has to be shared with the military and little remains for his P.E. class. So Nelis, in a fit of despair, reaches into his past and practices fencing alone – a girl, Marta, sees this and implores him to teach her as well.
Nelis starts a fencing class which gains popularity among the students, and the school principal (Hendrik Toompere), who has a bureaucratic disposition, resists his efforts, denouncing the sport as “feudal” and non-proletarian, a dangerous choice with the authorities. Tensions surge, somewhat, and Nelis falls in love with Kadri (Ursula Ratasepp), a fellow teacher.
If all this sounds contrived and uninteresting, it is. At the heart of The Fencer is a desire to recount a true story without the willingness to portray the nuances and contexts in more sophisticated terms. We have absolutely no idea what Nelis’ life was like prior to his exodus from Leningrad, no clue as to his complicity in any war atrocities, no family except a coach whose only job is to warn Nelis never to return to the limelight. Director Klaus Härö dispenses with intriguing storytelling for a whitewashed depiction of Stalinist evil. There are shots of predictable suspense, when Nelis finds himself tailed by what suspiciously appears to be a KGB agent, or when the police do arrive on scene looking for a traitor. There are images of socialist realism in the way characters behave – during a parent-teacher conference, the principal sternly tells off the parents who support the fencing classes; his assistant dutifully takes notes, an old babushka beside him knits.
There is also the classic dilemma moment, when Nelis has to choose between confronting his past and remaining safe and snug in small-town Haapsalu. He does the former, all right – was this really in doubt the moment the screen opens with sappy music and clean, crystal shots of the Estonian landscape? Even then, the dilemma isn’t fully delivered; the film ultimately ends on a happy note. Nelis is never truly fleshed out; his character bears all the signs of a man determined to do good, but his deeds are quickly ticked through like a checklist aiming to score brownie points – loving father-figure, melancholic facial expressions, the Bechdel test. Okay, maybe not the Bechdel test.
We learn most about his character from the everyday moments we spend with him. Granted, Härö tries to tackle it as authentically as possible and we see Avandi following the script dutifully, but does endowing your teacher with a gruff voice and stern classroom attitude really do justice to the narrative of a man with more secrets than he lets out? He certainly lets out few. Nelis’ character reminds me best of Ryan Gosling’s ‘Driver’ in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011), only that the latter is miles better.