Review by cranesareflying

One of the best films about alcoholism in Eastern Europe that I've ever seen, and how it paralyzes the best men by the millions, wiping them out just as effectively as if by a military maneuver. This is a devastating portrait, beautifully written, with simply brilliant and extraordinary acting by a father and daughter, overweight and alcoholic Josef Vinklar contrasted against the stunningly gorgeous appeal of Ilona Svobodova, revealing such tenderness in the discovery of one another. The daughter searches for the man who has been sending her mother child support payments, and discovers her never-before-seen father after her mother dies of the `worst' kind of death. He and 2 other men work alone in the outer reaches of an oil drilling site, but her father is a binge drinker with no hope of any recovery, revealed by panoramas of an endlessly bleak and weary wintry landscape where people are small afterthoughts It also includes a huge dog that the father found chained to a tree, which has been following him ever since, but he sleeps outdoors. The daughter hopes that her love will bring an end to his drinking, the cause of his sadness and misery, and that she can offer him a new start in life. But men are blind to their bad habits, and eventually, he drives everyone out of his life, even chaining his dog to a tree, the mirror image of his wretched existence. The contrast of these two characters couldn't be more dissimilar, resembling that of the same contrasts in MARKETA LAZAROVA. The incredible vulnerability of these two very extraordinary women is completely useless and all but forgotten in the painfully empty lives of these world-weary men. A stunning film.