rps-2
This wonderful film almost lost me in the opening scene which is devoted to some explicitly athletic sex. Oh dear... just another European skin flick.... Well!!! It turned out to be one of the finest films I've ever seen. The acting is superb, even watching it with subtitles. Even more impressive is the artful photography. Every shot is carefully and creatively composed and staged. The colour, for day and night, summer and winter, sunny and grey, is like that from a master's palette. The superb camera work is enough in itself to make this a memorable movie. Then, near the beginning, there are wonderful scenes of an antique steam train. As a train buff, a war buff and a photography buff, I was close to nirvana. This is a film Hollywood producers should watch to learn how it should be done. I have but one criticism. At over two hours, it runs a little long.
happipuppi13
Zelary is yet,another good find at the library for me. I hadn't heard of this film and I was sort of taken in by the unusual title. I watched it over 2 nights because I started the first 1/2 of the film kind of late. Otheriwse,I'd have sat straight through it. While it's true that there are elements in the film that have been used in other World War 2 dramas,that's a very small thing compared to the grandeur of the movie. It's (as mentioned in the DVD extra's) a love story. Two people get married to protect her from the Nazi's,who would have her executed for working against them. Sort of a marriage of convenience. What starts as something she's not looking forward too,blossoms into love between the two. Despite him being almost 30 years older. We see little of the German threat here but we know it exists,along with the threat of a young man wanting his way with her or he'll turn her in. The movie is more about how she truly becomes as one of the of the small village. The villagers are not 2 dimensional as someone mentioned,they are exactly as people were back then in the 1940s and farther back as well. The scenery is breathtaking and real which helps make it look as it did in that era as well. I feel all the actors did a fine job for a film that took 1 year and 2 months to complete. That long because they wanted authentic time and aging to happen,for a better sense of realism. It's nothing ground breaking but it was a very fine film to watch and become fully engrossed in. 9 stars,purely for being a good movie,with good drama and heart,as well as entertainment value. (END}
yonjan
This execellent movie contains both a very large story and many small vignettes providing context for each other. The large story is the Czech resistance to the Nazis and the consequences of being associated with them.The well developed and lesser developed characters exhibit such a wide range of the human goodness and evil. This movie will pull you in quickly and lead you thru our best and worst sides. The hapless and the resourceful weave in and out of a rich tapestry.Much of the movie is set in a small town with its curses and blessings. This provides a rich context for the many strong characters to thrive. Many gratifying relationships develop.The is a strong undercurrent of the randomness of war. Stupid mistakes and petty actions that have tragic consequences. The DVD has a fun extra of the start and crew's visit to Hollywood in hopes of the best foreign film Oscar of 2003.
George Parker
"Zelary" follows Eliska, a beautiful, young Czech woman through the course of her life during WWII as she is torn from her nursing work and antifascist movement support in the city to be secreted in a rustic mountain community where she finds herself having to cope with the tribulations of a hard rural life, a husband required to legitimize her presence as a cover, and the throes of a war which spills over onto the mountain villagers from both fronts. This slow moving 2:20 hour film pans the gamut of rural life in war torn Czechoslovakia as it looks wistfully at the bucolic beauty and plaintively at the juxtaposed evils of war showing us life, death, love, birth, hardship, evil, and more. An Oscar nominated Czech film with easy subtitles, "Zelary" is sometimes tedious, sometimes riveting, and always full of heart. Should be a pleasant watch for more mature audiences into the foreign film fringe. (B)
AD
