Invisible Fight

Original Title: Nähtamatu võitlus

Directed by: Rainer Sarnet

Country: Estonia

Length: 115 min.

Year: 2023

Premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2023

Synopsis: in soviet era Estonia, a young man joins an orthodox monastery to learn Kung Fu. 

REVIEW

What happens if you mix Kung Fu movies with Black Sabbath, Soviet Union age, Orthodox religion and scandinavian humour? Rainer Sarnet's film answers the question.
The opening scene echoes a popular wuxia film, with three asian characters that jump from tree to tree like the protagonists of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, hidden dragon. The Black Metal score could not make the tone of the scene more different. These three characters however are not the protagonists. Rafael, who survives their attack on a border post, will be inspired by them and answer his "call from God" by seeking to become a Kung Fu warrior.

The Invisible Fight is a continuous subversion of tropes of martial arts films: the typical buddhist monastery is replaced by an orthodox one, the monks seem to know Kung Fu but can't teach it. The cinematic language is that of Hong Kong action movies, the setting is Soviet-era Estonia.
There is the temptation to dismiss The Invisible Fight as another Tarantinesque film, but there is no mediation between Sarnet and Hong Kong cinema. It would be also excessively simplicistic to reduce the film to the status of a homage.

While the aesthetic of the film is asian-inspired, the subtext is inherently estonian. The film deals with the complicated relationship the country has to its soviet-occupied past, the oppression of the regime against religion. Rafael's journey brings him to face his atheist social background and learn his religious ancestry to find his own way in life. Kung Fu is a visualisation of the unseen conflict, the "invisible fight" between secularism and spiritualism that concretised in the eastern block regimes.

And the answer could not but be the absurd, a humour that reminds of scandinavian satyre as depicted in the films of Roy Andersson or Aki Kaurismäki (although their works are very distant from this film). Often the result is so over-the-top that it could reach the level of ridicule for some viewers.
The Invisible Fight is perhaps the
most unique, weird, daring and fun film to tackle religious oppression in the Soviet Union, but it requires the viewer to tag along the ride.