BBFF Dispatch #2: Melchior the Apothecary: The Executioner's Daughter (2022) dir. Elmo Nüganen / The Invisible Fight (2023) dir. Rainer Sarnet

The Boston Baltic Film Festival runs in-person from 3/1 through 3/3 at the Emerson Paramount Center and will continue virtually through 3/18. Click here for the schedule and ticket info, and watch the site for Joshua Polanski’s continuing coverage!

Melchior the Apothecary: The Executioner's Daughter

“Prove the righteousness of your path.”

As three films produced simultaneously, the Melchior the Apothecary trilogy from Estonia avoids the boring formulaic necrophilia that would be tempting had they been produced after the box office success of the first film. It’s what happens in most famous character-titled mystery series: the boon of one film becomes the bane of another, dooming the series along with the creator’s artistic integrity. Following Melchior the Apothecary and Melchior the Apothecary: The Ghost, both of which played at last year’s Boston Baltic Film Festival and are available digitally this year, the third film, sub-titled in translation as The Executioner’s Daughter, takes what easily could have been fanfare and instead delivers a dram of self-iconoclasm.
Director Elmo Nüganen, as well as novelist Indrek Hargla’s source material, reject a commercializing trope-ification of Melchior’s crime-solving gift. The stunning red robe Melchior (Märten Metsaviir) dons for the majority of the trilogy is sidelined for more unrecognizable garbs in The Executioner’s Daughter as he snakes around town avoiding the inquisition and evading capture. Beloved characters die and a thrust of revenge eventually overshadows the genre-catalyzing mystery. It’s also a much more patient film than its two predecessors (or, at least, my memory of them as speedy period piece who-dun-its). By subverting expectations, the Melchior trilogy attends to its allure.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.

The Invisible Fight

There’s an aspirational sports cliche, occasionally and dubiously attributed to the French-Canadian hockey legend Guy Lafleur, that admonishes athletes to “play every game as if it’s your last one.” Of course, one can play a 60-second shift with all the verve and violence within oneself and still make a few boneheaded decisions that rue the shift. In filmmaking, like in hockey, the right energy doesn’t always yield desirous results; it will always be watchable though.

The personality of such films doesn’t de-facto translate to good art; they do, regardless, tend to share that special love for the cinema. Stephen Chow’s films are like this. Despite being his sixth feature film as director, Kung Fu Hustle has the energy of a last go-around—that “what if this is my only film.” And I don’t know much about Rainer Sarnet, the Estonian director, but I do know that his latest film swims in this sort of energy. It’s also a microcosm of a very specific taste (or collection of them). A slapstick Estonian wuxia-satire encapsulated in a sincere Christian story of transformation set in 1970s USSR and filtered by heavy metal aesthetics, The Invisible Fight is, um, unique.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.