Editorial reading
"The world is spoiled, so we shall be spoiled too" — their destruction is a mirror the world sees itself in.
"The world is spoiled — so we shall be spoiled too." In 74 minutes the two Maries proved that destruction can be an answer.
The reading
Two girls, both named Marie, decide the world is spoiled and that they shall be spoiled too. They drift from banquet to banquet, overturning dinners, wasting food, toying with men, turning scissors, eggs and pudding into weapons. Věra Chytilová filmed it as an insurrection of images — jump cuts, collage, colour filters — completed in 1966, banned immediately, unseen again for over two decades.
The film's deepest layer is that it never lets the critic stand in a clean position. The Maries' "badness" and the world's badness share one grammar: the world spoils through war and greed, they spoil through waste and mockery. The formal mischief is therefore not stylistic whim but the argument itself: a spoiled world does not deserve classical narrative. Destruction here is not the goal but a developer — making the invisible rules appear in the ruins.
Questions to sit with
Answer them yourself first, then open the reference answer.
Q1The two Maries destroy their way through the film — what is it actually destroying?
A reference answer
It destroys the default setting that the world is orderly and deserves respect. They overturn banquets, waste food, toy with men — each blow lands on a pillar of middle-class ritual. Destruction here is not the goal but a developer: making the invisible rules appear in the ruins.
Q2Is the formal mischief — jump cuts, filters, collage — whim or argument?
A reference answer
It has an argument, and the argument is the form: a spoiled world does not deserve classical narrative. When the "badness" of the content and the "mischief" of the form share a frequency, the film becomes the very world it criticises — Chytilová's cruellest layer: she never lets the critic stand in a clean place.
Q3"If the world is broken, I'll be broken too" — where is the limit of that logic?
A reference answer
A hint: the limit lies in whether the destruction recognises itself. The Maries' problem is lucid destruction — they know they are being bad — whereas real-world slacking is often half-asleep: it ends up harming others while the self never wakes. The film's value is forcing the question: is your badness a mirror, or just badness?