Märt Avandi stars as real-life fencing champion Endel Nelis in The Fencer
THE FENCER (MEIKKAILIJA) (VEHKLEJA) (Klaus Härö, 2016)
Angelika Film Center, 18 West Houston St. at Mercer St., 212-995-2570
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, July 21
thefencermovie.com
Based on a true story, Finnish director Klaus Härö’s The Fencer is a compelling and moving film about a man on the run who suddenly finds himself in a situation that unexpectedly suits him. Estonian actor and comedian Märt Avandi stars as Endel Nelis, a real-life fencing champion who has escaped Stalinism in Leningrad and is hiding out as a teacher in a school in Haapsalu, Estonia, with a new last name. Initially dour and stand-offish, Endel is assigned by the school principal (Hendrik Toompere), a strict party loyalist, to run the sports club, and he soon decides to teach them how to fence, using homemade foils. His interaction with the children, especially Marta (Liisa Koppel), Jaan (Joonas Koff), Lea (Ann-Lisett Rebane), Toomas (Egert Kadastu), and Tiiu (Elbe Reiter), many of whom have been orphaned because of the German and Soviet occupations of Estonia and the continuing presence of the Soviet secret police, lead him to take a personal interest in their lives, as well as reevaluating the meaning of his own. He grows close with fellow teacher Kadri (Ursula Ratasepp), but when his old friend Aleksei (Kirill Käro) tells him that he needs to leave because the police are on his trail, Endel has some critical decisions to make, and not just about himself.
Endel Nelis (Märt Avandi) finds new meaning to his life in Klaus Härö’s The Fencer
The Fencer is the fourth of Härö’s five feature films to be selected as Finland’s submission for the Academy Awards. The first screenplay written by Finnish novelist and sculptor Anna Heinämaa, the film is tenderly directed by Härö with an acute visual sense (the sharp cinematography is by Tuomo Hutri), which comes about at least in part because of language barriers — he speaks Finnish, Swedish, and English, but the actors, including the children, speak Estonian and Russian. Härö (The New Man, Mother of Mine) steers clear of turning The Fencer into a historical drama, instead concentrating on the human aspects of the story rather than focusing on how the Soviets invaded Estonia after the war and rounded up men who had been drafted by the Nazis. He also handles what could have been a clichéd fencing competition with a gentle touch, the matches evoking a different kind of battle in which participants don’t end up dead. Resembling a young Max von Sydow, Avandi is excellent as Endel, an intensely private man who is suspicious of everything, keeping to himself until he becomes involved in something bigger than his own fears. He turns into a different person when he picks up his foil, suddenly ready to face a world that might not be quite as bitter and harsh as he thinks, where a man can stand up for what’s right, prepared to face the consequences.