Czech Dream

If you build it, they will come - providing you advertise. A documentary from a pair of Czech film students, Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda, The Czech Dream is a cautionary tale about mass marketing. The idea is to illustrate the extent to which people are influenced by advertising, and to this end the pair employ an ad agency to announce the opening of a fictional hypermarket while deploying anti-consumerist slogans such as 'Don't Spend' and 'Don't Come'. Naturally, the curious consumers turn up for the grand opening, only to be greeted by a massive facade bearing a rainbow and the words 'Czech Dream'. The point - which is driven home with thudding regularity - is that the Czech dream of conspicuous consumerism, and particularly that of western-influenced consumerism, is an empty promise, a contention that is tied in late on in the film with the impending Czech referendum on EU accession. Those who enjoyed Supersize Me and Michael Moore's documentaries will probably get a kick out of seeing the Czech public being duped into revealing the extent to which their lives are driven by avarice. There's no denying that the advertising campaign is a masterpiece of deception, and there's a fascinating conflict of interest between the fiction the documentary makers create and the way their ad agency refuses to countenance telling outright lies. Personally, I found myself wondering why the pair didn't spend the vast budget they squandered on the advertising campaign (no actual figure is mentioned; the pair are funded by a grant) on a decent mid-budget movie instead.