3 Seasons in Hell

It's not really badly acted at all, but the characters simply aren't interesting enough to go through the long story with them. It's a statement about the time and the people, but it's not valuable to me. It's as if there have been so many similar films in Czech cinema lately that another one just won't excite me. (15/05/2015)

I felt immense relief, because the hopes I had placed in Mašín's film were completely fulfilled. 3 Seasons in Hell is the same as its main character - engrossed in itself, its imagination, hasty, naively burning and sometimes very convincing. Despite the fact that there is an awkward romance after the exposition full of excellent visual metaphors and philosophical insights into the life of post-war intelligence, Mašín's film miraculously retains its integrity and its clear moral message. We can talk about the fact that, like Heinz, the film itself likes to listen to itself all too much, but the characters and their actions result in a completely consistent parable of a man thrown under the wheels of history. What I like about 3 Seasons in Hell is the film’s accessibility – it can be enjoyed by both experts on contemporary society and Egon Bondy, and by those who confuse the “greatest non-living poet" with a German teleshopping salesman... and Kryštof Hádek is finally establishing himself as a great actor. Tomáš Mašín should be thanked for looking at the 1950s without ignorance, tension and habitual patterns. He deduced from these years a moral message that was truly simple, but absolutely universally valid. Sometimes simple human SHIT is more important than a magnificent IDEA. (18/11/2009)

A lyrical poem about sobering up from the naivete of youth and loosing dubious ideals. Like most films that focus on a more abstract storyline, this one isn’t very viewer friendly, but the visuals are beautiful and the performances are better than expected. That said, making the hero a person whom the viewer can never identify with and actually,  based on the logic of the film, should never identify with, is a very bold move. Taking Ivan Heinz as a role model is only possible after a bad reading of the film, a very bad reading. An interesting and unusual approach and this time I’m rounding up the 7/10. (21/12/2009)

How the poet enjoyed life and how the poet lost his illusions. Simply a poet that Dušan Klein wouldn’t have liked much. The poser Bondy might have liked the result (but he still would have expressed his liking in the way that Tetsuo suggests), but nobody will ever find out. But to hell with it, because what is most important is that I like it in the end. I really like it. However, it is held back from getting the full five stars by the middle passage where it is unnecessarily slow-moving and nothing much happens and Hádek, whose acting is fantastic, just isn’t convincing as a seventeen year old. (29/11/2009)

In the context of the equally old Protector, 3 Seasons in Hell is a more watchable and meaningful film. However, this is in the context of utter lysing rubbish, which only deepened the gap between the Protectorate and the Third Republic. 3 Seasons in Hell is the latest example of the most difficult stumbling block in the reception of the perception of history after the May Revolution by Czech contemporaries. SHIT has been promoted to the first modern teenager, while the grebes and parasol mushrooms have been forgotten. I will probably never again see an equivalence between the frustration of the Heydrichiad and World War II; I will continue to wonder how the end of the 1940s can be interpreted at the same time because that is the time when something began that has passed quite recently, but the period up to 1945 will probably never again be accepted in any other way than the way it was denigrated by the new red protectors. Folks, this is a three-act thought fiasco wrapped into a solid film that oddly works, but solely on the basis of unreality. In short, the Czechs were denied year zero... In this film, Kraus remembered, in the best sense of the word, his original profession and did not amuse, but rather intrigued us. Martin Huba did not disappoint with his previously confirmed high standard, Kostelný and Krobot did not offend for once, and only those such as Ruppert, Pauhofová, and Kerestešová were useless. I appreciate Karolina Gruszka's performance, but not her dubbing. And the soundtrack is lovely. If Czech cinema has a future, it should only be in co-production. It can’t do it on it’s own. (22/06/2010)