Citizen Havel

I have a special affinity for Vaclav Havel. I was an undergraduate when hundreds of thousands of Czechoslovaks filled the streets of Prague in peaceful protest, chased out the grey communist bureaucrats, and installed a playwright as president. The Velvet Revolution enthralled me, and after graduation I joined the thousands of North American twentysomethings who headed for Prague. Havel was by far the most interesting of the dissidents and intellectuals who brought down the Communist regimes all over Eastern Europe, and for a time he made his country the most glamorous place to be in the world. So of course I had to see Citizen Havel, a documentary that follows the playwright-president over his ten-year tenure as president of the Czech Republic after the Velvet Divorce.

It's clear from the opening sequence what kind of film we're watching. Citizen Havel is a throwback to the glory days of cinema vérité, a fly-on-the-wall peek inside Havel's office, his summer house, and the grand presidential residence of Prague Castle. And most of it is shot on film. Film! When was the last time we saw cinema vérité shot on film?

The vérité approach is completely rigorous: no music, no effects of any kind, just the quiet drama and humour of life backstage in Havel's most important play, an improvised work in which he plays himself as President. Havel and his advisors wait for word on the presidential election (decided in a vote by Parliament), they plan state visits (Boris Yeltsin's only request is to have a beer at an "authentic Czech pub"), they entertain the Rolling Stones (Ronnie and Keef ask for a restaurant recommendation), etc. Throughout, Havel appears to be completely comfortable with the presence of the camera, hiding nothing - not his wardrobe conundrums, nor the petty rivalries of day-to-day politics - and occasionally slyly making sure the film crew captures a particularly absurd moment. Even when he's on his way to hospital for a potentially lethal procedure, he invites the film crew along. (That produces a priceless scene: before getting down to the business of medicine, Havel, his wife and his doctors sit down and have a drink together. Maker's Mark bourbon.) It's as if he decided that the best way to show the truth of his most famous statement, "truth and love will triumph over hatred and lies," is to live it on camera.

Now, lest I create the wrong impression, it's not like Havel is the Dalai Lama. His rivalry with Thatcherite premier Vaclav Klaus turns petty, and Havel neuroses over whether he can get away with not inviting Klaus to a jazz-club visit with Bill Clinton. After his wife, Olga, a revered figure in the Czech Republic, dies, he soon re-marries, to a sometime actress who, on the surface at least, couldn't be more different. But in the end, all this just adds to Havel's charm: he is completely comfortable with himself, and is happy to prick his own balloon at every opportunity. As a result, the film is as much observational comedy as political drama, and a reminder of the old saying that a portrait is given as much as it is taken.

There is a tragic coda to this story. Director Pavel Koutecky - to whom Havel chose to entrust this portrait - was killed in an accident before he could finish the film, so Citizen Havel was directed in the cutting room by Miroslav Janek. That's a hugely daunting task for someone who wasn't there when the footage was shot, especially when dealing with such historically and culturally significant material. But on the other hand, that kind of limitation forces you to deal with the material in front of you. You can't worry about what you don't have because you weren't there to see it.

The material Koutecky shot for Citizen Havel is unprecedented, and definitely unrepeatable. I can't imagine any other politician, present or future, giving a filmmaker such access without trying to manipulate the result. This is a truly historic film.