Something Different (1963) User Reviews

Chytilová delivers from the get-go

[artur-artborg · 8/10 · 30 November 2019]

While "O nécem jiném" may not be quite as mind-bending as Chytilová's later fare ("Sedmikrásky" remains one of my all-time favourite films), this - her debut feature - already features some of the trademarks that marks her as one of - if not the - greatest of Czechoslovakian filmmakers. Beautifully mixing between fiction and documentary, with drama and humor and some truly unique shoot compositions and editing, Chytilová shows from the very get-go just how talented she was.

Something Unique.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 7/10 · 3 February 2022]

After finding A Bagful of Fleas (1962-also reviewed) to be an interesting, stylish extended short, I decided to view the main feature on the very Second Run DVD, with a taste for something different.

View on the film:

Leaping into her feature film making debut, writer/ directing auteur Vera Chytilova takes the outline she had drawn with her final short of the era A Bagful of Fleas, and brilliantly builds on it, via closely working with Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970-also reviewed) cinematographer Jan Curik on mesmerizing, playfully fluid Czech New Wave (CNW) ultra-stylized camera-moves, from raw and gritty shots in the back of cars, to mesmerizing freeze frames and distorted close-ups on hands and feet during the acrobatics.

After having filmed the fictional Fleas in a CNW documentary style, the screenplay by Chytilova displays an outstanding ambition in crossing the two styles over.

While visually limiting the mixing of the two stories (both focused on women-a major recurring motif in Chytilova's works) to a short clip of real life Olympic gymnast Eva Bosakova (currently the 7th most decorated gymnast at the World Championships,and also introduced the cartwheel on beam) playing on Vera's TV, but cleverly having each be thematically linked, from Eva getting questions from the press that are repeated by Vera's husband,to a shared frustration at the mundane lives they are stuck in, as Eva and Vera each search for something different.

A quiet little gem

[gbill-74877 · 9/10 · 23 February 2020]

Such a quiet little movie and so unconventional that it won't be for everyone, but I really enjoyed it, and it stuck with me. The parallel stories of a housewife (Vera Uzelacová) and gymnast (real-life gold medalist Eva Bosáková) in Czechoslovakia are separate, but there is commonality in what director Vera Chytilová is showing us. I suppose it's in some of the obvious things, like the mother going through her morning routine just as the gymnast warms up and practices, and also in the wonderful touch of feminism the film has. I got the sense that both housewife and gymnast were being put through their paces by men, with the housewife being taken for granted and mostly ignored by her husband when he gets home from work, and the gymnast patiently enduring her coach pushing her. They are both beautiful, thoughtful, hard-working women. The gymnast achieves after a tremendous amount of discipline and hard work, and the housewife takes control of her own body in having an affair, and then later holds her family together. All of it is done in such a light, graceful way, and with some really nice framing and camera angles from the first-time director. To do this non-conformist film in such an artistic way, and dealing with chauvinism and the heavy weight of the communist State - it impresses me all the more. What is the movie about? Probably more than it would appear; a woman expressing herself, and the truths of women.

Aptly named!

[philosopherjack · 19 October 2019]

Vera Chytilova's Something Different delivers exactly that, most literally by switching back and forth between two contrasting narratives: one observing Eva, a gymnast in training for upcoming championships; the other following Vera, a housewife overwhelmed by her hyperactive young son and by domesticity in general. The two strands only occasionally explicit echo each other (Vera's husband and Eva both criticized for reading the paper, him at the dinner table and her on the beam) but provide parallel studies in the difficulty of maintaining balance (in Eva's case, literally as well as figuratively) and resisting subjugation. Eva's position seems more privileged by virtue of her relative fame, and yet her coaches rail at her laziness, grab at her limbs and pull her into desired poses, scornfully dismiss her ideas and instincts, and at one point slap her across the face: her final performance liberates her from such direct control, while withholding any real sense of exultation. By comparison, the sequences with Vera are a frenetic pile-up of life problems, underlined by frequent arguments about money. She starts an affair with a man who pursues her in the street, but in large part it seems like another source of life clutter, another submission to an agenda primarily set by someone else; when a crisis hits at the end, she has no option but to cling onto what she has, however unsatisfying. The film's last sequence, with Eva now coaching a young female athlete, suggests the possibility of calmer and more nurturing structures ahead, but the final note is questioning and reflective rather than in any way triumphant. Eva's distinct place in society relative to Vera's correlates with a greater openness to cinematic invention as measured by camera angles, freeze frames and suchlike, but these also speak to her distance from the more typical life experience.

Unconventional Czech masterpiece

[martinpersson97 · 10/10 · 7 July 2023]

I have a certain fondness for the unconvetional and experimental, a passion that I know many lover of film has shared throughout the years since the medium's conception - and this film, by a great director, certainly delves deeply into all of that.

It is truly a very remarkable and unique piece, focusing a lot on cinematography and imagery, and the writing and acting is wonderful, in a very unconventional and artistic way.

This is definitely a film I would recommend for lovers of film, though it might be somewhat of an acquired taste, of course, and one that doesn't tell a linear story that many might be used to.

Nevertheless, a beautifully put together piece that is a great testament!

Even bad Godard is better than this

[buddylove447 · 3/10 · 4 December 2020]

The plot summary for this is tripe. Suppressed women, male dominated society blah de blah. One woman (the gymnast) is coached by a man AND a woman and ends up a coach herself. The other woman, after no doubt leading the man into marriage and kids, then decides this isn't for her and finds it frustrating. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her? Isn't the man as much of a victim of societal pressures and expectations? I enjoyed some of the shots and editing, and at times felt I could watch the wonderful Eva Bosáková all day, but there isn't any story here, very little characterisation, and not a great deal of talent on show from Chytilova, who made her reputation with the wildly experimental but overrated DAISIES. Some of these directors just thought a storyline was disposable if they filmed with jaunty angles in black and white.