Czech Dream (Ceský sen) was the second movie that M and I saw on Friday. It was at the Orpheum, so we sat in the first row balcony and enjoyed the ambience...and the popcorn. (Mmmm, real butter.)

We had read the write up in the Wisconsin Film Fest guide:

A pair of young Czech filmmakers, Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda, stand in a parking lot, next to a frozen field. This, they tell us, will be where they build the front of a massive supermarket, a hypermarket. But there is a catch: the store “will never exist. It will just be a front wall.” They will call their hypermarket Czech Dream. It will be the object of an intense marketing campaign, with street posters, television and radio commercials, newspaper and magazine ads, consumer research, and a theme song sung by a children’s choir, all designed to attract thousands of people to the grand opening. Why? “We won’t answer,” one of the directors says, “hoping the film will answer that for you.” The cameras follow the filmmakers step by step, as they enlist advertisers and marketers, run shopping focus groups, interview Czech consumers about their love of supermarkets, tailor their ad campaigns, and build the hype for the opening of the nonexistent store. Is this an exposé of the deep roots of consumerism, an ingenious social intervention, or a duplicitous hoax? Winner, 2005 Best Documentary Feature, San Francisco International Film Festival; 2004 FIPRESCI Prize, Llubljana International Film Festival. - Stew Fyfe

But we still weren't entirely sure what to expect. So, we were pleased to discover that it was clever, witty, and well made. It could be tempting to call it a mockumentary but I don't think that would be accurate. Rather, it was a documentary that not only followed the course of the prank, but took a close look at the nature of advertising, consumerism, and desire.

We found it particularly interesting to contrast our own American consumer and shopping culture with that of the Czech people. In the film, a manager of on the the hypermarkets talks about his youth and standing in line just to get one kilo of bananas. For them, the line from famine to feast has only recently been crossed. So what is our excuse?

The other thing we found fascinatig were the various reactions of people in the movie. For starters, there is a great scene with one of the ad men puts his foot down about one thing that he refuses to allow into the ads if he is going to be involved with the project, "I won't lie to people." Then there are the reactions from the public at the "Grand Opening" when they discover the hoax. A surprising number of them laughed and said that they were happy to have such a nice day out in a field to get some sunshine and exercise. Others were extremely upset by the joke.

Interestingly, among those who were angered, the conversation turned towards whether they should vote to join the EU. They drew parallels between this empty ad campaign and the ads surrounding the EU vote.

As we left the theater that night, we were fairly please that so far, we were two for two on good film choices. Would our luck hold?