Udoli vcel(Valley of bees,1967 )
Language:Czech
Director:Frantisek Vlasil
Cast: Petr Cepek, Jan Kacer, Vera Galatikova,Zdebek Kryzanek
The movie, set in the medieval times,is about a certain Ondrej/Andrew who has been, when a kid, sent to an order of faith "up the north".The order members , apart from addressing each other as brother and indulging in the "great fasts" and other self-depraving acts, take great pride in keeping their order intact and punishing the "weak and infidel" who try to escape.
Andrew escapes and goes back to his house and a "brother" from the order - Armin, comes after him, vowing to bring him back to the order. How Andrew behaves after being relieved of the stringent rules of knighthood and whether Armin succeeds in his mission or not form the rest of the story.
There's an ample dose of meta-physical and poetic symbolism , much of which went way over my head ( When he's a kid, his dad marries a girl who's barely older than him. Andrew gives her a basket full of flowers as a gift. And she finds that there are bats(!?!?!) hidden among the flowers.Dunno WTF it's supposed to mean. Whats with all the bees anyway? Was it supposed to be an analogy of human life? But yeah, the shots related to the bees were AWESOME. ) But, inspite of all my ignorance of this hifi stuff, I found it a very a gripping drama aided with some wonderful performances. And there's some lovely western classical music in the background. Especially the heavenly piece on a flute-like instrument is absolutely ammmazing!!
Movie is in black and white ( ofcourse) , and the cinematography is cool. But at times the camera work resembles that of a hand-held mini DV (in the amount of shake). The print was also very poor.
One of the highlights of the movie is a deer-hunting scene. Am willing to bet that real deer and dogs have been used to film the sequence. (NFAI guys should thank God that Maneka Gandhi and her ilk do not watch Czech movies).
Interesting movie.Definitely worth a watch if you are even remotely interested in the crusaders and/or religion-vs-pleasure themes.
Director:Frantisek Vlasil
Cast: Petr Cepek, Jan Kacer, Vera Galatikova,Zdebek Kryzanek
The movie, set in the medieval times,is about a certain Ondrej/Andrew who has been, when a kid, sent to an order of faith "up the north".The order members , apart from addressing each other as brother and indulging in the "great fasts" and other self-depraving acts, take great pride in keeping their order intact and punishing the "weak and infidel" who try to escape.
Andrew escapes and goes back to his house and a "brother" from the order - Armin, comes after him, vowing to bring him back to the order. How Andrew behaves after being relieved of the stringent rules of knighthood and whether Armin succeeds in his mission or not form the rest of the story.
There's an ample dose of meta-physical and poetic symbolism , much of which went way over my head ( When he's a kid, his dad marries a girl who's barely older than him. Andrew gives her a basket full of flowers as a gift. And she finds that there are bats(!?!?!) hidden among the flowers.Dunno WTF it's supposed to mean. Whats with all the bees anyway? Was it supposed to be an analogy of human life? But yeah, the shots related to the bees were AWESOME. ) But, inspite of all my ignorance of this hifi stuff, I found it a very a gripping drama aided with some wonderful performances. And there's some lovely western classical music in the background. Especially the heavenly piece on a flute-like instrument is absolutely ammmazing!!
Movie is in black and white ( ofcourse) , and the cinematography is cool. But at times the camera work resembles that of a hand-held mini DV (in the amount of shake). The print was also very poor.
One of the highlights of the movie is a deer-hunting scene. Am willing to bet that real deer and dogs have been used to film the sequence. (NFAI guys should thank God that Maneka Gandhi and her ilk do not watch Czech movies).
Interesting movie.Definitely worth a watch if you are even remotely interested in the crusaders and/or religion-vs-pleasure themes.
posted by Kapilash | 8:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home