Želary

A wonderful film about the conflict and the subsequent merging of two different worlds. I heard the words about "American" kitsch. Sadly, we consider scenes from the daily lives of mountaineers to be kitsch. Legátová is not kitschy, nor is Trojan. For me, this film was a riveting sequence of scenes from the ordinary life of ordinary people, combining the excellent performances of Geisler, Cserhalmi and, most importantly, the sensuous Iva Bittová. I couldn't take my eyes off it, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching real events, not camera stylization. The ending, however, almost spoiled my enjoyment, after that beautifully flowing band of events, suddenly the point of the whole story became too violent and schematic. Trojan should have stuck with Legátová and not disrupted the uniformity of time of the wonderful story by leaping into the future. (27/01/2004)

Želary deserves four stars. At least for the actors. But I still find it regrettable that only Jan Svěrák is able to wrap Czech movies up in beautiful film poetics, so that whatever happens in them, it’s a pleasure to watch them. Such warmth is what the cold and overly made-for-TV-looking Želary lacks. (01/02/2004)

A film that ages like fine wine. It’s perfect even when compared to Květa Legátová’s book "Jozova Hanule." Of course, I'll never forget the time we discussed the seeming "endlessness" with a young teacher from Colorado. Yet the whole misunderstanding depended on the fact that this young American was not impressed by such dominant details as fashion and the development of the automobile industry. Without knowledge thereof, it is then impossible to recognize the shift in time period. (10/03/2009)

Without absurdities such as the caption “years later" or cheap scenes with a beautiful soulful gaze of a dog, this could have been absolutely excellent. But this way it is just above-average quality in all respects. What bothers me, though, is the running time. It has a lot of needless scenes, while several fundamentally necessary ones are missing. Given the number of characters in the story, as you might expect, some of their behavior remains unexplained. Although this is understandable, when the same applies to the main protagonists, this really is rather bewildering. (27/03/2005)