Der Dorflehrer

Ahhh! The joys of the simple life....Yes, go hand-in-hand with the joys of a simple movie! Watching films from MANY different countries is an absolutely enthralling endeavor! Each nation's films tend to exhibit a peculiar cultural signature spin, that is a delightfully intriguing puzzle, waiting to be deciphered and savored. An appetite for Czech films is, however, undoubtedly an acquired taste.

Let me share some of the things that made TEACHER such a cinematic plum. Very In-Your-Face, but without ever trying in the least to be, is the physical appearance of the actors themselves. WOW! Talk about the antithesis incarnate of the 2 hours per day at the gym, capped-teeth-multiple-plastic-surgery-and-hair-implant, monthly-Botox-injections "LOOK" that seems to be practically the norm in Hollywood...This cast looks like they were sent from "Real-People'R'US", after dropping out of their weekly ReHab meetings!

Also, there were a couple moments in the film where I began feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the direction the movie began to go in, but before this discomfort escalated into something more serious, the movie veered off in a pleasantly unexpected direction! No formulaic Hollywood fluff, here...NO Siree, Bob!

Two cultural notes: Boy, these Czechs sure are at ease with nudity! People running around nude in the house, Hey, doesn't raise an eyebrow! Also, people are ever so cooperative with official government policy! Government says "No more discrimination against gays in the workplace!" and its: "DAH! Dee government says vee must do dis, so vee are on board...OK!" One pleasant and unexpected surprise...The Czech folk(?)music! Very soothing and haunting melodies. I'll have to ask some of my Czech students to fill me in! Be sure not to miss it! Recommended by a Friend...

8*STARS*....ENJOY/DISFRUTELA!

Any comments, questions or observations, in English or Español, are most welcome!

Bohdan Sláma wrote and directed this sensitive and tender story about public versus private views of sexuality in the Czech Republic: his gifts as an artist of cinema are formidable. He knows how to tell a story, how to create a fascinating group of characters that with little dialogue speak loudly about human rights and understanding of differences.

THE COOUNTRY TEACHER ('Venkovský ucitel') opens with a young teacher from Prague who has joined the faculty of a small country school - an environment completely at odds with the rush and high life of the city. Petr (Pavel Liska) is a quiet, withdrawn, seemingly depressed young man who immediately connects with the students in his Ntural History class. The students and community accept this new gift to education in the provinces but wonder why such a fine teacher would leave Prague. Petr finds housing in a curtained room of a meager household and begins his quiet cloistered life away from what seems to be a traumatic escape from his home in Prague. We soon learn that in Prague, Petr had problems with a relationship and his fellow teacher mother cannot understand why Petr cannot find happiness as a normal married male. He confesses to her that he is gay and his mother (and elusive father) begin to understand why Petr 'escaped'. Back in his new country home Petr makes friends with a single mother Marie (Zuzana Bydzovská) who serves as both mother and father to her 17 year old son Lada (Ladislav Sedivý), a funky lad in love with a girlfriend whom he sees as his intellectual superior. Marie hopes to attract Petr but when overtures are ignored she instead engages Petr to tutor Lada. All goes well until Petr's ex partner (Marek Daniel) visits and disrupts the environment of Petr's closeted safe life. As Petr and Lada grow in their relationship as tutor and pupil, Lada discovers he can indeed succeed academically. After a night wen the two drink too much an incident occurs that unveils Pter's growing love for Lada and Lada leaves in disgust. The world explodes for Petr but gradually his honesty as presented first to Marie and then to his faculty begins a course of healing that leads to a touching closure of the story.

The cast is first rate and capably convey the spectrum of emotions that surround this little tale of discovery. How Bohdan Sláma is able to keep his story aligned in transferring between Prague and the little county province demonstrates a sensitivity to human interaction that is equal to the finest writers and directors. In Czech with English subtitles.

Grady Harp

FIRST: Let us FOCUS on the Title's Content and Context....

When viewing this MADE IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC FILM! The phrase CULTURAL CLASH kept popping into my brain! But not in the tradional sense.... Instead... The CLASH between U. S. Viewers and the CULTURE of the characters and situations that appear during its 95 Minutes!

Ahhh! The joys of the simple life!!! ....Yes, which go hand-in-hand with the joys of a simple movie! The COUNTRY TEACHER proved to be both an immensely enjoyable and, indirectly, an oddly educational experience!

Watching movies from MANY different countries is an absolutely enthralling endeavor! Each nation's films tend to exhibit a peculiar cultural signature spin, that is a delightfully intriguing puzzle, waiting to be deciphered and savored. An appetite for Czech films is undoubtedly an acquired taste!

Let me share some of the things that made TEACHER such a cinematic plum. Very In-Your-Face, but without straining in the least to do so! The very first thing that jumps out at the viewer is the physical appearance of the actors themselves. WOW! Talk about the antithesis incarnate of the 2-hours-per-day-at-the- gym-capped-teeth-multiple -plastic-surgery-and- hair-implant-monthly-Botox-injections "LOOK" that seems to be practically the NORM in Hollywood! This cast looks like they were sent from "Real-People 'R' US", just after dropping out of their weekly AA meetings!

Also, there were a couple moments in the film where I began feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the direction the movie began to go in, but before this discomfort escalated into something more serious, the movie veered off instead in a pleasantly unexpected direction!

Absolutely ZERO formulaic Hollywood fluff, here...NO Siree, Bob! Two cultural notes: Boy, these Czechs sure are at ease with nudity! People running around nude in the house.... Hey, doesn't EVEN raise an eyebrow! Also, people are ever so cooperative with official government policy! OK...Now Dee Government say "No more discrimination against gays in Dee workplace!" and its: "DAH! Dee government says vee must do dis, so vee are on Board 100% !"

One pleasant and unexpected surprise...The Tradtion Czech Folk(?) music! Very soothing and haunting melodies. I'll have to ask some of my Czech students to fill me in! Be sure not to miss it! Recommended by Friend-MOVIE Freak 66-Please Read her Review also!

7.75* Rounded up to 8********

ENJOY! / DISFRUTELA!

Czech director Bhodan Slama's acclaimed The Country Teacher looks at love and loss at a rural dairy farm in the Czech Republic. It is a gentle, humorous, and often inspiring film about the struggle for self-acceptance and the resilience of people who must go through many spaces to discover that their lives work better together than apart. The film has gorgeous photography of the rural Czech countryside and includes the birth of a calf, perhaps an allegory for the need for three individuals to pull together. It is a narrative-centered film of considerable depth, one in which there is strong character growth and development, the kind of film Hollywood used to make.

When Petr (Pavel Liska), a gay teacher from Prague, arrives to teach science to youngsters in a small farming town, suspicions are raised by the principal (Cyril Drozda) about what he is running away from. The teacher, however, says everything is OK but his reticence and constant hangdog expression suggests otherwise. Petr manages to form a bond with a single mother, a fiercely independent cow-herder named Maria played by the exceptional Czech actress Zuzana Bydzovska. Distressed over the breakup of an abusive marriage, she looks to Petr to fulfill her needs but discovers in a hayloft that his needs may be quite different than hers.

Another example of unfulfilled longing is the relationship between Maria's lanky 17-year-old son Lada (Ladislav Sedivy) and Beruska (Teresa Boriskova), a girl visiting from the city who plans on studying law. Both seem to be involved with each other until Lada begins to question whether or not he is not smart enough for his more sophisticated girlfriend. Beru shrugs it off until she perhaps comes to the same conclusion and runs off with Petr's visiting ex-boy friend (Marek Daniel), a scatter-brained headhunter from Germany whose major talent seems to be one of disruption.

In one of the film's most revealing scenes, Petr visits his slightly overbearing mother (Zuzana Kronerova), also a teacher, in Prague and comes out to her after being questioned extensively about an ex-girlfriend. Though there is sadness, there is no bitterness or recrimination and his mother's only concern is that he is not alone. Petr is thoughtful and introspective and when he tells his raucous ex-boy friend that he will not engage in sex without love, we believe and trust him. Lada also trusts him as he begins to tutor him not only in Math but in life. Unfortunately, though the heart is strong, the flesh is weak and, after he rescues a drunken Lada from drowning, Petr gives in to his impulses and engages in some harmless but inappropriate touching when Lada is asleep.

Though there are the expected expressions of shock and name-calling, it is plain that the emotional bond that the three have formed outweighs their shock, even though it takes time for them to realize that. Backed by the gorgeous, meditative music of Vladimir Godar's Mater, The Country Teacher ultimately is not about coming out, however, but about coming to terms with one's own humanity. Pavel Liska is strong as the self-doubting, insecure teacher whose emotions range from love and longing to guilt and redemption and each person, in their own way, emerges from their own dark corner to reach a place of peace and self-acceptance.

In spite of some unwanted melodrama, The Country Teacher avoids stereotypes and achieves a searing emotional power by telling us that love is stronger than fear and that there can be no love without forgiveness, a sentiment that some film critics have labeled "implausible". I am reminded, however, of the country priest in Bernanos' novel Diary of a Country Priest, who said, "How easy it is to hate oneself. True grace is in forgetting. Yet, if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity as one would love any one of those who themselves have suffered and loved." The Country Teacher touches those moments of true grace.

Our teacher (P. Liska) in question leaves his prestigious job at an equally prestigious school in Prague to assume a far more mundane position in the Czech country-side. He looks lost, bewildered and reticent, speaking only when absolutely necessary. Is he hiding something, fearful of past skeletons in his closet coming to the forefront to haunt him mercilessly?

He settles in with a small farm family consisting of a woman and her son, who have their own fair share of past trials and tribulations unto themselves. An old mate of the "teach" (our title teacher) from the city finds his way out into the country to find our protagonist teacher and sparks immediately fly. Our "teach" has suppressed his homosexual orientation to all in the countryside and yet the mate from Prague, who was the teacher's former lover, is hell-bent on renewing their affair and is very demonstrative about it. "Teach" wants no part in it, as he wants a relationship based on love, not lust.

Without telling too much more of the story line, suffice it to say that the old skeletons to which I earlier referred are brought to the forefront in a very skillfully paced manner by the director B. Slama. Teach's so-called search for love degenerates temporarily into deriving sexual satisfaction from the young son on the farm. The unsolicited advances by "teach" are strongly and virulently rejected by the young boy who now hates the new guest teacher. Now the teacher, the mother and her son have to deal with this new trauma, or closet skeleton, if you will, in addition to all their prior baneful experiences.

Just how all these prior and new experiences will be met and subsequently dealt with and possibly sorted out lies in the hands of our skillful director and cast. What they do and how this is accomplished results in a tender yet forcefully portrayed set of scenes, where each of our protagonists has to deal honestly and openly with their strengths as well as their weaknesses and honestly open up to one another. What you may deduce from the movie's ending is that it is not an ending at all, but in fact a beginning, a Genesis, if you will!!