Zelary

Starring:Anna GeislerovÃ¡, GyÃ¶rgy Cserhalmi, Jaroslava AdamovÃ¡, Miroslav Donutil, Jaroslav Dusek, Iva BittovÃ¡, Ivan Trojan, Jan HrusÃnskÃ½, Anna VertelÃ¡rovÃ¡, TomÃ¡s Zatecka, Ondrej Koval, Tatiana VajdovÃ¡, Frantisek VeleckÃ½, Viera PavlÃkovÃ¡, Juraj Hrcka, Imre Boraros, Jana OlhovÃ¡, Jan Triska, Michal Hofbauer, Edita Malovcic
Director: Ondrej Trojan
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

we adapt and make the best of our situation
Ultimately irritating and unsatisfying
The Heart never fails to surprise.....
The love of many
Excellent film of another time and a lost place

Zelary
Starring: Anna Geislerová , György Cserhalmi , Jaroslava Adamová , Miroslav Donutil , and Jaroslav Dusek
Director: Ondrej Trojan
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0006SGYLA
Release Date: 2005-02-08

Customer Reviews:

we adapt and make the best of our situation.......2007-01-20

a real love story and an all around beautiful movie!
Can't recommend it any more than that!
barb

Ultimately irritating and unsatisfying.......2006-07-15

Zelary was on many reviewers' Best of 2005 lists, but what these people saw, I guess I'm missing. It is beautifully filmed, and the story maintains a certain tension throughout as you wait to see whether Eliska/Hana will be found by the Nazis, but it fails on at least on major level and ends on a note of pointless bloodshed and tragedy.

The first clue that this might not be for me was right in the opening scene: Eliska comes home with her doctor boyfriend and the two of them have sex. Now, at this point, you know nothing about either of them, except that they are well dressed and live in apparent comfort. Since nothing about the characters or the relationship has been established, watching them get it on really adds nothing to the experience. Perhaps this is the director's way of telegraphing that Eliska is a modern girl - she has sex! In 1943! - but since you don't know if they are married or not, that revelation is saved for later.

And then - poof - within just a few minutes, Eliska's life in Prague and with her lover is over anyway, and she has to go into hiding for her work with the resistance. Joza, man she has nursed back to health from a sawmill accident is persuaded to take her back to his little mountain town and marry her. There she can live relatively freely. Eliska goes, but she's not happy about it or gracious. She grieves for her former life and is contemptuous of Joza and the villagers.

The rest of the movie is more or less a series of not-very-interconnected village stories that involve Eliska and Joza in some respect. Village life is hard; poverty is ever-present. Some neighbors are kind, but the village is also filled with the usual domestic malice: abuse, rape, alcoholism, intolerance. One man hounds Eliska for sex, even as she is falling for her new husband. It's a hard place to be a woman, a place with the constant threat of victimization hanging overhead. Eliska, for all of her education and modern ways, only survives it; it's unclear whether she grows from her interaction with the villagers or not. Those relationships go largely unexplored, with the exception of the one she makes with the local midwife/healer.

The central conflict of the movie - will she learn to value Joza and village life over her former life - is never satisfactorily resolved because in the final moments of the movie, tragedy happens and Eliska doesn't have to decide. Which makes the what precedes this - all of those more-or-less interconnected stories - seem rather pointless.

Eliska's relationship with Joza is never delved into either. In the beginning she is repulsed by him, but after a few quickly managed modifications - his bathing and his putting in a new floor for her - she finds him good enough to bed. Their relationship develops over time to become tender and supportive, but the basis of their love, why exactly they connect outside of pure proximity, never gets explained.

Finally, anyone looking for a remotely happy ending should be forewarned. The last twenty minutes are a splash of unexpected violence and several sympathetic characters die and pointlessly.

Points must be given for the unusual choice of making the village priest a good and holy, though human, individual, but overall this a flawed piece.

The Heart never fails to surprise............2006-04-02

I think several previous reviewers have nailed what is so good about this film. I just wanted to add my voice to theirs. A quiet, deliberately paced story of a young female medical student involved in the WWII Prague resistance who must go into hiding from the Gestapo in a rural village. Her protector is a simple, older peasant man who had been a patient in her hospital. To insure her "cover" and to help protect the villagers from Nazi reprisals she must wed this man. The story of how this sophisticated young city woman adapts, adjusts to and what she learns from this very different life then unfolds.

Beautifully filmed, this story illuminates the dislocation the heroine feels, the danger surrounding both her and the villagers who exhibit all the normal human traits of honesty and dishonesty, treachery and loyalty, wisdom and foolishness. And finally, there is love and the human heart and the never-ending surprises to be found there.

Ah, the human heart and love, throughout history and a thousand stories already told, we still find it inexplicable and unpredictable. There will be another thousand stories yet to charm and bewilder us, if they're done well. This bittersweet tale is one more, and I found it worth my time.

The love of many.......2006-03-17

This film is a bit different but also about survival during the war years. One must do what they can to live. A young woman gets caught up in an underground movement. To escape she leaves her familiar life. Will she find her lover? Will she be found out by the Nazi? Her future lies with the common folk of a small village. Please take your time to see this lovely movie.

Excellent film of another time and a lost place.......2006-03-08

One can read the other reviews for the plot synopsis. I would only add that I found this movie to be as much about a certain place (the title) as about a love story. We see the lives and interconnectedness of these people through the eyes of the young woman who must out of necessity live with them.

This movie is well-worth the effort, and could be a very good introduction to foreign language films for those who shy away from them.

I guess I reserve 5 stars for all-time classics, but Zelary really is a great movie -- poignant and touching.

One more point: Although I'm not Catholic, I was gratified to see a priest portrayed as a devout yet human person and not a hypocritical or ineffectual jackass.

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