Utz

Rating:
Summary: To live in artistic rapture!
Review:
Armin Muller Stahl made a tour de force acting as the patience collector. Art against fashion; cosmic breathe against fashion concerns. These figures are a real visual feast.

The amazing dialogues , the assertive narrative pulse and the ravishing performance of Stahl deserved for him the Best Actor Award in Cannes 1992.

If you are a artwork collector as I do, acquire this unusual movie.



Rating:
Summary: Beautifully Constructed
Review: (...) This slim book sure doesn’t look like much on first inspection. The main character certainly doesn’t look interesting; he is a Czech porcelain collector during the Czechoslovakian Communist era. However, looks can and are deceiving, as we all know.

This book is actually a strong indictment against Communism. Chatwin shows his readers lots of little annoying details of the Communist state. Utz collects porcelain figures and constantly has to be on the lookout for government officials who want to confiscate his collection on behalf of “the people.” Along the way we get a neat little history of porcelain and a heck of a surprise ending. What Chatwin seems to try and say with this book is that life in a Communist state is one of hidden personality. People and places aren’t what they appear to be. The surface image is a carefully cultivated façade that protects a person from the sudden dangers that can happen anytime within a totalitarian state. Chatwin is also a master storyteller. He is one of those rare people that can insert little stories within stories without distracting from the larger picture.

Sparse but full of depth, Utz is an excellent read. I suspect that Chatwin’s other novels are at least as much fun as this one. I give thanks to one of my favorite people for posting a review on this book. Now I can pass the word. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Light as a feather yet extremely deep
Review: Bruce Chatwin was dying in the late 1980s of a mystery disease, he claimed originating from a rare Chinese fungus. It was subsequently confirmed to be AIDS. Utz emerged out of these inauspicious circumstances. Chatwin explained the thinking behind Utz in a letter to his friend, Cary Welch, whilst confined to his bed due to ill health: 'I had thought I'd use the time to read and re-read all the great Russian novels. Instead, hardly able to hold a pen, I launched forth on my story: A tale of Marxist Czechoslovakia conceived in the spirit and style or the Rococo'.

As ever, Chatwin could sum up the spirit of his own novels in a few words better than anyone else. But while Utz is certainly ornate, it is not florid and insubstantial like much of the art that the term Rococo is applied to. Utz is a porcelain collector who collects under the shadow of Communist repression which prohibits private ownership of property. The story is said to be based on Chatwin's encounter with Dr Rudolph Just, a businessman and passionate collecter of glass, silver and Meissen who married his housekeeper.

The story is ostentiably about the collection of porcelain as an escape from political repression. But within its few pages, the novel explores a great many more themes. Great art as a beacon of hope, the survival of the characters of Old Europe - resolutely immune to political indoctrination, as manifested in the character of Marta, Utz'z housekeeper whom he marries towareds the end of the novel, the Jewish dimension (Utz is partly Jewish) - the notion of collecting as a subversive activity, worshipping idols over God. The pretty little figurines in Utz seem to take over a life of their own as they become imbued with the worries and burdens of the characters. And as a backdrop to all of this, Chatwin penetrates deep into the spirit of Communist Prague better than almost any other novelist who has tried.

A gem of a novel.

Rating:
Summary: You *Can* Go Home Again
Review: For years I assumed Utz to be the name of some farflung placeto which Chatwin had traveled. I suppose I was half-right, becausewhen the book was published (1977), the Iron Curtain had madeCzechoslovakia as seemingly remote as Patagonia or the badlands ofAustralia, the settings for some of Chatwin's other fiction. But Utzis the last name of Kaspar Utz, a resident of Prague's historic JewishQuarter who uses his dwindling political influence to retain controlover his priceless collection of Meissen porcelain in a socialiststate where private ownership is a crime against the people. Althoughporcelain is his life, Utz dreams of freedom across the border anddecides to defect even though it means leaving his collectionbehind. He travels on a one-month visa to Vichy, France, but findsthat through overabundance freedom has lost its flavor. Concludingthat "luxury is only luxurious under adverse conditions," hereturns to Prague, initiating an annual cycle of intended defectionsand inevitable homecomings. Chatwin, an English world traveler andone-time art buyer for Sotheby's, combines an anthropologist's acumenand an art historian's erudition to render both Soviet Prague andMessein porcelain in such a way that one illuminates the other.

Rating:
Summary: Nice, evocative story
Review: On the surface, this seems a bit of a pointless story about a rather dull and self-absorbed porcelain collector in Prague. The entire story is built around a brief encounter between this title character, Kasper Utz, and a British visitor to Prague in 1967. What follows is a collection of fragments of memories, conversations and conjectures. But Chatwin is a skilled writer, and readers are drawn into an intriguing little tale that says much about human nature, the compulsions of the collector and important events in the history of porcelain - it's more interesting than it might seem. Some of his descriptions of Prague during the communist years are also quite vivid, with a documentary historical value. Given the subject matter and the way it is approached, this book is always absorbing, and even quite suspenseful at times.

Rating:
Summary: Utz By Chatwin a Treasure
Review: The novel Utz, by Bruce Chatwin is an excellent book. It is entertaining, comedic, and tragic. Throughout the book Bruce Chatwin does an incredible job of developing characters and for the most part he remains true to the characters that he creates. The style of the prose used and the choice words leads to a very nice, lush, interesting read. Most of all though the plot is original, thoughtful, and provokes discussion. The one negative comment that I feel obligated to make is that at certain times Chatwin gave to much background information which could have the effect of overwhelming the reader. Overall this book was written an intelligent, articulate man who should be proud to call it his masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Salvation in small things
Review: This was for me the first Chatwin, and a great surprise.
Not just a novel, not just a travel story in the last years of the soviet regime in the Czech Republic, but also a delicate essay of some marginal aspects of XVIII century life: the art of white Meissen ceramics.... With many delicious detours in the labyrinths of mittleeuropean culture and in the psychology of the collector (be him of books, of stamps or whatever).
A book of enormous erudition almost concealed in small details and witty remarks.
And not just learning, but also humanity and a mild observation on the cases of human life under despotism - the meaning freedom, the many faces of opportunism (the one in the oppressed citizen, the one of the intellectual who "freely" criticizes from his warm "western" deck the grey dull soviet regime).
No one get salvation, but Baron Von Utz, who seems able in the mediocrity of ordinary life, of prevarications, of despotism, to resist the nausea of life in the contemplation of his collection.
The perfect world theorised by Leibnitz is perceived as in a glimpse in the eternal stillness of his Meissen figures.
A truly great book!

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Rating:
Summary: Interesting Literary Exercise
Review: UTZ has much going for it. Chatwin packs a lot into a short novel: portraits of a Communist state in its waning years and a man caught in material obsession. Chatwin has a winning way with storytelling, well drawn images just fall off his pen and what might seem a boring concept moves swiftly and holds interest. It is the story of Kaspar Utz who through most of the violent world-changing events of Europe in the 20th century, builds an extraordinary collection of porcelain figurines, a collection he improves on even while living in Prague where personal property is prohibited. Allowed yearly visits to Vichy ostensibly for his health, Utz makes purchases on the sly and smuggles them back. The aforementioned ambiguities are opened like a can of worms in these trips to Vichy: Utz could defect but does not. It is there, in a place of freedom and plenty, he makes the key observation that luxury is only luxurious under adverse conditions. The mysteries swirl up around him: why does he give up the opportunity to escape Communism, what happens to the collection, and what is the nature of his relationship with a woman who lives as a servant in his apartment? In the mid - late 80's, Chatwin's unnamed narrator returns to Prague to sort out the questions long after Utz's death, coming to some unpredictable conclusions.

UTZ was a tad problematic for me. It is different from the other of Chatwin's books I've read; it does not compare to THE SONGLINES, which I adored. It is intentionally fraught with so many ambiguities that I'm not sure I really "got" it all.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Literary Exercise
Review: UTZ has much going for it. Chatwin packs a lot into a short novel: portraits of a Communist state in its waning years and a man caught in material obsession. Chatwin has a winning way with storytelling, well drawn images just fall off his pen and what might seem a boring concept moves swiftly and holds interest. It is the story of Kaspar Utz who through most of the violent world-changing events of Europe in the 20th century, builds an extraordinary collection of porcelain figurines, a collection he improves on even while living in Prague where personal property is prohibited. Allowed yearly visits to Vichy ostensibly for his health, Utz makes purchases on the sly and smuggles them back. The aforementioned ambiguities are opened like a can of worms in these trips to Vichy: Utz could defect but does not. It is there, in a place of freedom and plenty, he makes the key observation that luxury is only luxurious under adverse conditions. The mysteries swirl up around him: why does he give up the opportunity to escape Communism, what happens to the collection, and what is the nature of his relationship with a woman who lives as a servant in his apartment? In the mid - late 80's, Chatwin's unnamed narrator returns to Prague to sort out the questions long after Utz's death, coming to some unpredictable conclusions.

UTZ was a tad problematic for me. It is different from the other of Chatwin's books I've read; it does not compare to THE SONGLINES, which I adored. It is intentionally fraught with so many ambiguities that I'm not sure I really "got" it all.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite
Review: When you see the name of Bruce Chatwin you see trips to exotic places, strange and interessant people, great landscapes. Forget it!

This book is a little novel about a strange fellow in one of the most beautifull cities in Europe, Prague, with a curious hobby. The author beautifull explain why someone with the means and the chances choice to stay in a policial regime instead of a free country. Who so many people lives in a private world so different from the cold outside.