"Zelary" is a very picturesque movie that offers a glimpse into peasant life in Czechoslovakia during World War II.
It's a bit boring, though, and disappointing, because the filmmaker can't conceive of women or peasants as having any interesting internal life worth devoting film stock to.
So, in this film that centers around a woman and a village full of peasants, the narrative drive is all but absent, and the movie consists of unconnected vignettes, rather than a powerful, coherent plot that powers the film from first frame to last.
The viewer feels that he does not have to pay attention, and he doesn't. Peasants singing, peasants picking berries, peasants getting drunk, attempting to rape their neighbors, attending mass -- it's just one big diorama.
There is a character with some internal life. He is male, and he is white collar and educated. He's the town school teacher. It's clear: director Ondrej Trojan can do scenes with some complexity; he just doesn't want to do those scenes for female or peasant characters.
I missed "Zelary" when it played in local theaters. I had really wanted to catch this tale of a city girl forced to hide out in the hut of a crude villager, as my mother is from Czechoslovkia, and some of the best years of my life have been spent in villages like Zelary -- high, impoverished, and remote. And I've had a relationship similar to the one depicted in the movie.
Unbeknownst to director Trojan, real life, exciting life, life and plots as driven and demanding as in any city, *do* take place in small villages. In the same way that an urban character, or a man, can be the rewarding and relentless focus of a carefully unreeling plot, women and peasants can, as well.
Problem: many former Soviet bloc men felt emasculated by Nazi, and then Communist, invasions and imperiums, and dealt with this by dehumanizing women -- they established a hierarchy in which they could find someone to feel superior to.
That's what happens here. The female lead is made to pose without clothing in the movie's very first, and utterly gratuitous, scene. Hana, the woman the entire movie revolves around is, in that scene, reduced to nothing more than the object that rewards pathetic viewers in a peep show. It's hard to identify with such a debased and cheapened character / actress.
Hana's never given a chance to redeem herself. She is shown aiding the resistance, but only at the directive of men, who operate her as if she were a marionette.
Nazis close in; she is sent, again, by men, to a remote village, where she is forced, again, by men, to marry Joza, a local villager.
That this villager is unmarried defies credulity. In any case ... this is not the last time this peasant is manipulated to serve Zelary's plot, such as it is.
Hana is resistant to consummation of this forced marriage, until Joza, the much older peasant, lays, for her, wooden planks over his dirt floor, and then bathes. This is enough for her to consummate the forced marriage.
"Zelary" opened by exploiting its female lead -- both the character and the actress playing her -- as if she were a prostitute; in the marriage consummation scene, it utterly betrays her.
This character, we have been told, is a resistance fighter, and a medical student. Would she really have relations with a man she otherwise can't stand for such poorly motivated reasons? What a low view of women Ondrej Trojan, the filmmaker, has. The connotation of Trojan's last name in American slang is all too appropriate.
And that's as much development as the central story gets. The film becomes a series of disconnected, soul-less tableaux of village life.
One can't help but think of Peter Weir's far superior film on a similar theme, "Witness." In that movie, Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis play an urban cop and an Amish widow who must share a farmhouse in a remote, rural scene. "Witness" works slowly, carefully, to reveal their characters, and their growing love.
For a movie like "Witness" to work so hard to reveal human character, and to drive a plot with that revelation, the director has to believe that his characters have inner life.
Trojan has no such belief. He treats his characters as superficial dolls. They are worthwhile as wearers of colorful peasant costumes; they are worthwhile, if female, when not wearing anything at all, and in one of the movie's many, many, rape scenes.
In the cheapest move of all, Trojan sacrifices one of his characters for sheer convenience's sake, to eliminate the need to plumb the depths of the two people who've been on screen for more than two hours.
The war ends. The Nazis are defeated. Hana is released. She can leave the hamlet she once hated, Zelary. She can leave the older, crude peasant man. He says as much to her: "You can go now. If not today, then tomorrow, or next week." She says nothing. And, then, Joza is shot dead. How convenient! Joza managed to survive years of Nazi occupation, in spite of hiding a wanted resistance fighter, living in his house in plain sight, and the day she can leave him, the day that demands that the filmmaker give his despised female character and lowly peasant character some complexity, some inner life, the filmmaker makes it easy on himself, eliminates the need for any probing exploration of the humanity of his characters, and shoots one of them dead.
Cheap. And disappointing.
Women, and peasants, deserve better.
It's a bit boring, though, and disappointing, because the filmmaker can't conceive of women or peasants as having any interesting internal life worth devoting film stock to.
So, in this film that centers around a woman and a village full of peasants, the narrative drive is all but absent, and the movie consists of unconnected vignettes, rather than a powerful, coherent plot that powers the film from first frame to last.
The viewer feels that he does not have to pay attention, and he doesn't. Peasants singing, peasants picking berries, peasants getting drunk, attempting to rape their neighbors, attending mass -- it's just one big diorama.
There is a character with some internal life. He is male, and he is white collar and educated. He's the town school teacher. It's clear: director Ondrej Trojan can do scenes with some complexity; he just doesn't want to do those scenes for female or peasant characters.
I missed "Zelary" when it played in local theaters. I had really wanted to catch this tale of a city girl forced to hide out in the hut of a crude villager, as my mother is from Czechoslovkia, and some of the best years of my life have been spent in villages like Zelary -- high, impoverished, and remote. And I've had a relationship similar to the one depicted in the movie.
Unbeknownst to director Trojan, real life, exciting life, life and plots as driven and demanding as in any city, *do* take place in small villages. In the same way that an urban character, or a man, can be the rewarding and relentless focus of a carefully unreeling plot, women and peasants can, as well.
Problem: many former Soviet bloc men felt emasculated by Nazi, and then Communist, invasions and imperiums, and dealt with this by dehumanizing women -- they established a hierarchy in which they could find someone to feel superior to.
That's what happens here. The female lead is made to pose without clothing in the movie's very first, and utterly gratuitous, scene. Hana, the woman the entire movie revolves around is, in that scene, reduced to nothing more than the object that rewards pathetic viewers in a peep show. It's hard to identify with such a debased and cheapened character / actress.
Hana's never given a chance to redeem herself. She is shown aiding the resistance, but only at the directive of men, who operate her as if she were a marionette.
Nazis close in; she is sent, again, by men, to a remote village, where she is forced, again, by men, to marry Joza, a local villager.
That this villager is unmarried defies credulity. In any case ... this is not the last time this peasant is manipulated to serve Zelary's plot, such as it is.
Hana is resistant to consummation of this forced marriage, until Joza, the much older peasant, lays, for her, wooden planks over his dirt floor, and then bathes. This is enough for her to consummate the forced marriage.
"Zelary" opened by exploiting its female lead -- both the character and the actress playing her -- as if she were a prostitute; in the marriage consummation scene, it utterly betrays her.
This character, we have been told, is a resistance fighter, and a medical student. Would she really have relations with a man she otherwise can't stand for such poorly motivated reasons? What a low view of women Ondrej Trojan, the filmmaker, has. The connotation of Trojan's last name in American slang is all too appropriate.
And that's as much development as the central story gets. The film becomes a series of disconnected, soul-less tableaux of village life.
One can't help but think of Peter Weir's far superior film on a similar theme, "Witness." In that movie, Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis play an urban cop and an Amish widow who must share a farmhouse in a remote, rural scene. "Witness" works slowly, carefully, to reveal their characters, and their growing love.
For a movie like "Witness" to work so hard to reveal human character, and to drive a plot with that revelation, the director has to believe that his characters have inner life.
Trojan has no such belief. He treats his characters as superficial dolls. They are worthwhile as wearers of colorful peasant costumes; they are worthwhile, if female, when not wearing anything at all, and in one of the movie's many, many, rape scenes.
In the cheapest move of all, Trojan sacrifices one of his characters for sheer convenience's sake, to eliminate the need to plumb the depths of the two people who've been on screen for more than two hours.
The war ends. The Nazis are defeated. Hana is released. She can leave the hamlet she once hated, Zelary. She can leave the older, crude peasant man. He says as much to her: "You can go now. If not today, then tomorrow, or next week." She says nothing. And, then, Joza is shot dead. How convenient! Joza managed to survive years of Nazi occupation, in spite of hiding a wanted resistance fighter, living in his house in plain sight, and the day she can leave him, the day that demands that the filmmaker give his despised female character and lowly peasant character some complexity, some inner life, the filmmaker makes it easy on himself, eliminates the need for any probing exploration of the humanity of his characters, and shoots one of them dead.
Cheap. And disappointing.
Women, and peasants, deserve better.