kolkata his throne has been usurped and the king must go in exile away from the mansion he made his home for 13 years suddenly his daughter finds her spacious apartment is barely enough for herself and her husband suddenly his partner of long standing discovers hes been womanising suddenly his secretary ignores his instructions to burn his private correspondence suddenly the secretary asks vilem rieger to publicly support the newly crowned king and not so suddenly his autobiographer now has a new subject vlastik klein after the premiere of leaving 2011 vaclav havel playwright essayist poet dissident president former president is now also a film director the tenth and last president of czechoslovakia 198992 and the first president of the czech republic 19932003 74yearold havel returns in a sense to his family business his father was the owner of the barrandov film studios not surprising that all through his politically tumultuous life havel nursed the dream of making films havels father in fact owned the entire suburb of barrandov on the highest point of prague while his mother was the daughter of an ambassador and journalist this bourgeois lineage became a stumbling block for havel the communist regime would not let him pursue formal education after the required read minimum schooling so he worked as a stagehand studied drama by correspondence worked in a brewery collaborated with a vaudeville company this grounding helped not only when he took to staging plays like the garden party 1963 or the memorandum it has also imparted the irreverential tone and surreal farcical absurdist unfolding style of leaving based on havels play that premiered in 2008 and was performed in the us last year leaving unfolds when the chancellor of an unidentified country is ousted from office and told to vacate the magnificent stateowned villa he occupied else he must publicly support his successor vlastik klein the synopsis may sound slim but the script is full of satirical movement and caricatured characters as it takes a tragicomical look at an ousted politician the foremost czech actor josef abraham essays vilem while havels wife actress dagmar havlova portrays the chancellors long time companion its a character written for her and not about her the director said when the film was screened in moscow last june vaclav wanted the problem of change and leaving to be felt in the subtext of the play and the film he says on record change is continual people are always leaving settings change as do ways of life but the protagonist cant handle change he stops functioning and his whole world collapses around him he responds in the worst way possible he adapts to a subordinate position that serves the new state of affairs its a theme that doesnt document any particular person or specific act of leaving however despite such rejections by havel the constant blurring of real life characters situations motifs even properties comes through as intentional viewers discover parallels