Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Waves’ Review: Jiří Mádl’s Drama on the End of the Prague Spring Marks a Timely Portrait of the Power of Principled Journalists
Historical dramas — in particular those centered on fearless feats of resistance against authoritarian regimes — often seek to be warnings. The oft-quoted Winston Churchill line — “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” — may ring simply too facile. Yet in watching a film like Jiří Mádl’s handsomely mounted period drama “Waves,” one cannot help but see in its story, and in the history it’s retelling, an urgent plea about the pressing need for a free press. But within its thriller-like trappings is also a complicated meditation on how such a demand rests on the shoulders of men and women who are human, and therefore fallible.
“Waves” opens with an unequivocal historical truth: “The Soviet Union keeps Eastern European countries under its control,” a voice informs viewers as images of Joseph Stalin, the U.S.S.R. and the aforementioned countries and peoples (including those of targeted and executed political prisoners) flash on the screen. “Any sign of freedom is suppressed by force,” this short prologue states, setting the tone for the rightfully paranoid atmosphere that “Waves” soon plunges into. Media censorship — and the fear it distills and depends on — is rampant. The year is 1967 in Czechoslovakia and in that country there is no larger media organization than Czechoslovak Radio.
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Set in the run up to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, “Waves” is most fascinated with the way those working at the International News Office at Czechoslovak Radio served as a last standing bulwark against the authoritarianism that would eventually fully take over in 1968, when tanks and troops tamped down on any open dissidence to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. As a point of entry to that history, Mádl introduces the fictional character of Tomáš (Vojtěch Vodochodský). He’s an everyman who unwittingly finds himself working at the radio station and witnessing firsthand how journalist luminary Milan Weiner (Stanislav Majer) righteously stands his ground against state-sanctioned censorship and intimidation.
Like many citizens who listen raptly to his every word, Tomáš is awed by Weiner. But unlike his younger brother Pavel (Ondřej Stupka), who goes out into the streets in protest and sees in such activities a powerful sense of civic duty he must abide by (and which Weiner rightly represents), Tomáš is more skittish. More prudent. More pragmatic, perhaps. He’s the kind of citizen who’s eager to put his head down and make sure he has food to put on the table as he cares for his brother. He doesn’t see himself having either the privilege nor the principles to personally involve himself in the resistance his new place of employment becomes a symbol for.
No sooner has Tomáš begun working at the radio station than Weiner and his team begin to more forcefully push back against the news coming out of the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovakian government itself. Weiner soon makes clear he’s not about to be a mere cog in the propaganda machine his boss would have him be. His beliefs put him and his team in the crosshairs of a government and a military who are becoming increasingly hostile to those who do not toe the party line. When a recording of what really took place at a student protest arrives in their office, Weiner and his colleagues (not to mention Tomáš, who’s been recruited by State Security to inform on the radio’s activities) have to weigh how far they will go to shine a spotlight on the truth. And whether their own livelihood and sense of security is worth such a risk.
“Waves” unfolds like a ticking time bomb of a spy thriller. Filip Malásek’s editing deserves praise for keeping an edge-of-seat tempo, even as the story plays out exactly as you know it will. Tested loyalties and cat-and-mouse chases set the stage for the brave work Czechoslovak Radio’s journalists accomplished in the year leading up to the invasion. The film’s pulse-pounding rhythms (alternately scored by 1960s pop songs and Simon Goff’s stunning compositions) soon make it feel like a gripping John Le Carré tale. The freedom of the press is here no mere abstract concept; it’s an embodied moral imperative that rests on professionals who constantly had to make tough personal choices that could put them at odds with colleagues, friends and even family.
Anchoring this tale in the perspective of Tomáš, Mádl makes the moral clarity of the likes of Weiner — and even the more pragmatic approach of someone like Věra Šťovíčková (Tatiana Pauhofová), a key figure in the anti-occupation broadcast that serves as the climactic event in the film — feel all the more powerful. This is no hagiographic portrait of Czechoslovak Radio as a beacon of civic resistance. It is a grounded, humanist work of how difficult it can be to make moral choices in the face of authoritarianism.
Led by its stellar ensemble, “Waves” makes for a fleet-footed period drama, the kind whose straightforward narrative is heightened by its stylistic and narrative confidence. Those familiar with the history of the 1968 occupation may know how things will turn out. But Mádl isn’t solely interested in chronicling that pivotal year. He’s memorializing a historic moment that resonates in 2024, precisely because its central themes have not, in the decades since, become historical ones. If anything they’ve become all the more urgent for it.
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