Die Volksschule

THIS is the top of Czech cinematography. Excellent movie, directed by Jan Sverak with wonderful Jan Triska. The only one sentence you can say after watching it is: IT WAS AWESOME.

My review was written in March 1992 after a screening at MoMA in Manhattan.

Nominated for this year's foreign-language film Oscar, the Czech comedy "Elementary School" is a funny but thin exercise in nostalgia set in 1945 and 1946, that makes a few political points.

Debuting director Jan Sverak shows competence in staging clever gags and recreating an era with flamboyant crane shots, but the script by his dad (and pic co-star) Zdenek Sverak is not up to snuff.

The elder Sverak, who previously wrote Jiri Menzel's wonderful "My Sweet Little Village", portrays a power station worker nicknamed "Transformer". His 10-year-old son Eda (Vaclav Jakoubek) is in a class of bad boys who literally drive their teacher (Daniela Kolarova) nuts with their pranks.

Replacement teacher is a disciplinaria (Jan Trika, familiar from many Hollywood films) who claims to be an anti-Fascist war hero. Though he applies frequent corporal punishment the boys come to revere him.

Between the funny sight gags from the young cast, the film's main subplot involves Triska's amorous adventures with nearly every pretty girl in sight, which almost cost him his job.

Script's sardonic jabs at the "model socialist state" being nurtured in Czechoslovakia after the war are old-hat, as is the pic's overall theme about true heroism (Eda's dad) vs. Celebrity (his teacher).

Attractive camerawork of the countryside, occasional musical nods and scenes involving Eda and his young friend Tonda (Radoslav Budac) pay homage to Bernardo Bertolucci's epic "1900". Film's light tone and sentimentality owe much to the work of directors Menzel and Karel; Kachyna, both of whom pop up in cameo roles.

Acting by Triska, Sverak and the supporting ensemble is uniformly good.

Igor Hnizdo (Jan Triska) arrives as a new tough teacher to work in the elementary school in a small Czechoslovakian town just after the WWII. The movie reflects many of the dark aspects of the Czechoslovakian history. They're being told with a lot of sense for humour but in fact are not so funny because of the historical facts. Scholars are growing within the time background of the 1945 (end of the war) and 1948 (Communistic overthrown) which makes otherwise sweet and funny movie somehow dark from perspective that you know how bad future lies in front of them.

A delightful little movie that makes you feel good inside after watching it. I saw it the first time at a movie festival in Pisek in what was then Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1991 and when I see it now it's like going back there again.

Advertised as a movie for children in the newspapers, I beg to differ. Children will enjoy it but it is also suitable for a mature audience.

Kind of similar to Lasse Hallström's My Life as a Dog.

It is a must to see, even if you are a first-timer in Czech comedies. No matter how old you are, it will remind you of your childhood as well, you will recognize the little things that maybe happened to you, or you have heard of them in some stories from people from the older generations. Character portrayal, story and direction are in my point indisputable qualities. This film is about the details and interactions; and in the process the viewer can pick up some lessons for himself. After creation of excellently defined characters, the writer's next task is to make the interactions equally good. We have hope, fear, love, fondness, sexuality, brutality, pain, happiness, poverty, enjoyment...

I just wish I could see it for the first time, again!