Zelary

This is one of the great movies of my lifetime! Passionate directing; a superb cast; a brilliant script and gorgeous scenery leave an indelible memory of my Zelary experience. Those who love Hitchcock will appreciate the suspense and intrigue. Those who love chick flicks will endear to the passion and feelings elicited. But Zelary is not a "chick flick" in the true sense. It's a heart-wrenching story of lovers separated and who go on with their lives to survive. It's the life you make when you have little choices. It's about making the best of that life. And it's about the memories generated over a lifetime. A movie to be enjoyed by all ages and especially by true movie lovers.

An excellent movie with a beautiful, complex setting. I would call it a classic tragedy, though the only possible flaw of the tragic hero Joza is his selflessness in helping others. It is great to see a movie involving WWII that is not just a war movie and is from a fresh perspective, rather than from one of the major players in the War. The scenery is beautifully natural and the characters will move you to sympathize with them. While it does not have a picture-perfect happy ending, I was encouraged by the redemption and heroism of the young boy Lipka. There are several miscommunications and accidents throughout the movie that support its realism. I will definitely read the novel Jozova Hanule now, on which the movie is based.

This magnificent film arrives way too late after it was nominated for the best foreign movie of 2003! Important European movies don't have the great market they should have in America, even though, this picture is better than some of the local fare. Director Ondrej Trojan must be congratulated for what he has done with this movie.

The story begins in 1943, at the time where Europe was going through one of the worst moments of WWII. The Germans are everywhere and the Gestapo is the instrument to eliminate the people that are working in the resistance. When the young medical student and nurse, Eliska, is found to be in danger, she is send to the country with one of the patients she has been taking care at the hospital. Thus begins the saga of a woman who must hide, or face jail, or probably death.

The movie then changes to a pastoral setting when Joza, the peasant who has been kind enough to take Eliska to his farm, agrees to marry her in conspiracy with the local priest and the school teacher. That part of the country is catholic and backward. There is a hypocrisy in the way this teacher and priest keep a closed eye about what the local peasantry are doing. On the one hand, the peasants appear to be God loving citizens, but they live lives dominated by alcohol, rape, incest, and other evil practices. No one questions anything.

Joza enters in the marriage out of gratitude toward the nurse that helped him heal his wounds. Then, steadily, he falls in love with a woman who is completely different from him. In turn, Hana, as she is now named, starts seeing in Joza qualities she has taken for granted. Their love is genuine.

The two principals, Anne Geislerova and Gyorgi Cserhalmi are wonderful in that make us believe they are these two people that get to know and love one another under the worst possible circumstances.

The countryside where the film was filmed is so beautiful that it makes one wonder how could war have been waged in such surroundings. The magnificent cinematography of the picture takes us back to those sad years of the war, and what that country endured as a Soviet satellite nation.

Following similar themes as "Cold Mountain" this official Oscar submission from the Czech Republic is a masterful war time drama with a great heart. Heart-breaking and warm, it carries those themes to a much richer conclusion than "Cold Mountain" was able to. if this film is not one of the Foreign Language film nominees then something is clearly amiss. See it!

Zelary (2003), directed by Ondrej Trojan, is an variation on the theme of a person thrown into an environment for which he or she is not prepared. In this case, the protagonist Eliska (Anna Geislerová) is a beautiful, sophisticated nurse in Prague during the German occupation. Forced to escape from Prague, Eliska finds herself in a remote Czech farming village.

In this setting, her urban knowledge and social skills are inadequate for survival. Predictably, her basic intelligence and her nursing experience do, indeed prove useful. However, without help from the people in the community, she can't possibly survive. Whether her abilities--and the assistance of the villagers--will prove adequate to ensure survival is the question around which the plot revolves.

The weakness of the film is that Eliska's transition into her role as the wife of a farmer is far from adequate. Anna Geislerová is so refined and elegant that it would have taken more than two long braids to fool the Germans (or anyone else).

Still, the concept is interesting, and the film does well in conveying the complexities and difficulties that confront a stranger in an apparently tranquil rural community.