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.

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!

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.

Shortly after the end of WWII, a new male teacher starts in a grammar school in a quiet poor suburb of a city in Central Europe. This former officer in a uniform with a REAL PISTOL and always a war story at hand catches the hearts of all boys very quickly. When you are a young boy, the world is so full of adventures! But sooner or later you will learn that life is more then just boy games and adventures ... Althoug The Elementary School might be seen as a movie for young boys, it also brings with it a very serious hidden message (contrary to Oscar winning Kolya of the same director). If you look away from the child games and small rascalities, the true central character is Eda's father. The movie consist of memories of an old man who recapitulates his childhood and his relation to a strong fatherly figure in his family. It is about lost childhood, lost innocence and the first questioning whether my father is really the best, greatest, wisest, strongest etc. man in the world. This is even more important line of the story then the Tom-Sawyer-like undertakings. And the movie is really good ...