The Fencer
Vehkleja
Klaus Härö (2015)
During the Second World War, Estonia was occupied first by Nazi Germany and then by the Soviet Union. The Nazis drafted Estonian men of fighting age into the German army; the Russians considered these men to be, like other German soldiers, criminals. Estonia became de facto part of the USSR (although most Western countries never legally recognised it as such): in the early post-war years, against a background of continuing insurgency against Soviet rule, upwards of 20,000 Estonians were deported either to labour camps or to Siberia. Some of this history is summarised in a written prologue to the Finnish-Estonian film The Fencer (Vehkleja is its Estonian title – the Finnish one is Miekkailija). Set in the early 1950s, it tells the story of Endel Nelis, one of those young Estonians conscripted into the German army.
With his life as a fencing coach in Leningrad increasingly precarious, Endel leaves the city to escape the attention of the Soviet authorities and takes refuge in Haapsalu, a small Estonian coastal town. He starts work there as a sports instructor in the local school and begins teaching fencing to a group of the children – with improvised foils until one of Endel’s friends, still in Leningrad, sends proper equipment for them to use. Endel also starts a relationship with Kadri, one of the women teachers on the staff. The school principal soon becomes suspicious about Endel’s past and gets a sidekick, one of the male teachers, to do some detective work. The Haapsalu kids read in the newspaper about a fencing competition for youth teams from across the Soviet Union, which is to be held in Leningrad. They’re desperate to take part. Endel is naturally nervous about the location; Kadri urges him not go to there but he feels he can’t let the kids down. The Haapsalu minnows eventually defeat the fencing big fish of Moscow, Leningrad etc. At the moment of their victory, Endel is escorted from the building by the military police. In the last sequence of The Fencer, Endel – as he did at the start of the film – steps down from a train onto the platform at Haapsalu station. He has been released from labour camp (as many Estonians were following the death of Stalin in 1953). Kadri is there to greet him, along with the youngsters whose lives he changed.
Closing legends explain that Endel Nelis was a real person, that he lived to see Estonia regain its independence (Nelis died in 1993) and that the fencing club he started in Haapsalu is still going strong today. But The Fencer, like many a true story of the screen, is sometimes hard to believe, thanks to its clichéd narrative apparatus. Endel Nelis, as conceived in Anna Heinämaa’s screenplay, is a combination of types – inspirational teacher and man on the run. The drama depends on the moral dilemma and heroic self-sacrifice that result from the tension between the two types – and, for its climax, on a David-vs-Goliath(s) sporting competition. The clichés are there in the details of individual episodes, as well as the overall framework. Endel’s initial reticence with Kadri and temporary fallings out with Jaan and Marta, the two key members of his fencing team, are par for the course. The Soviet-toady principal proposes, to a meeting of parents, an end to ‘feudal’ fencing at the school and takes a show of hands; those in favour of fencing take so long to raise their hands that the sequence plays as a comic parody of this kind of pivotal-moment-scene. On arrival at the competition in Leningrad, the Haapsalu team looks set to be disqualified from taking part because their equipment isn’t up to scratch: Endel’s desperate requests to borrow kit from their competitors are rebuffed until another team coach steps forward, in the nick of time, to save the day. Up on a balcony, the Soviet authorities watch the competition, smirking balefully, with the treacherous principal at their side, cheering on his school. Endel’s team has three members and one reserve (Marta) – who, of course, delivers the final decisive hit. Their coach isn’t there to celebrate his team’s victory – even though he hasn’t made a getaway, this brings to mind the suddenly vanished von Trapp family in The Sound of Music, when they’re announced the winners of first prize at the Salzburg festival. The figure-glimpsed-through-train-smoke on the railway platform at the end of The Fencer could easily be mistaken for the returning father in The Railway Children.
Klaus Härö scores higher marks for casting than he does for directing (most of) his actors. The principal (Hendrik Toompere), his creepy acolyte (Jaak Prints) and Marta (the extraordinarily pale blonde Liisa Koppel) are striking to look at but their acting – especially their reacting – is mostly too deliberate. Yet, in spite of all this, I loved The Fencer – it gradually turned into the most thoroughly affecting new picture I’ve seen this year. (As a result, the revelation that Endel Nelis really existed was exceptionally heartwarming.) The emotional effect was so strong that I came out of Curzon Bloomsbury feeling thankful to Klaus Härö not just for the film he’d made but for reassuring me that it’s worth spending hours each week in the cinema because there’s always the possibility of experiencing something like this. How come? The answer’s simple, I think: The Fencer shows what can be achieved with a fundamentally involving human story and a good actor in a dominant leading role.
As Endel, Märt Avandi holds the camera with remarkable sensitivity: Endel never gives a lot away but Avandi does a fine, subtle job of distinguishing between the different registers of his reserve. At first, Endel keeps himself to himself because he needs to conceal his past identity; as his love for Kadri (Ursula Ratasepp) and for the kids strengthens, he has new emotions to contain. Märt Avandi’s playing creates such a pressure that, when the character does occasionally show more emotion, the impact is powerful – for example, the wonderful, choked laugh of disbelieving gratitude, when Endel opens the crates of fencing equipment his friend in Leningrad has sent to the school. Avandi gives Endel a moving combination of anxiety and nobility, and uses his body as expressively as his face – the shape of his fencing positions, Endel’s nervously excited hand movements, as he encourages his team in Leningrad. In the supporting roles, the best work comes from Joonas Koff as Jaan and, especially, Lembit Ulfsak, as Jaan’s grandfather. Klaus Härö exploits essential features of fencing to convey – obviously but effectively – the hero’s situation: a faceless but unignorable opponent continuously threatens to penetrate Endel’s guard. With the help of his cinematographer Tuomo Hutri, Härö also creates some impressively melancholy landscapes. A sparse, sensitive piano score is just what you’d expect in a piece like The Fencer; Gert Wilden Jr’s sparse, sensitive piano score works, even so. (There’s a bit of it that echoes one of the best-known phrases in Pictures at an Exhibition.) By hinting at what the protagonist is feeling, the music complements Märt Avandi’s beautiful performance.
5 October 2016