Zelary

When Hana and Joza go to visit his mother's grave she is wearing a different dress as they return home.

Well, I am biased, of course. But we have few books as unique and touching as Zelary by Kveta Legatova, and we have few movies as good this one.

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.

This film is worth seeing, but is much too long. It felt like a TV mini-series!

Zelary tells a powerful story and the film has been wonderfully made - the photography in particular is outstanding, capturing the beauty and harshness of the mountain village location. The soundtrack is excellent too, as is most of the acting.

During Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, a nurse who is part of the resistance movement flees to the countryside to avoid persecution. There are good performances from Geislerova as the nurse and Cserhalmi as the uneducated fellow she marries to help change her identity.

There are dozens of redeeming qualities in this excellent Czech film, not the least is a feeling for a living village populated with actual people, certainly a result of dedicated ensemble acting; the film also imparts a sense of the natural beauty too often defiled by man's obsession with power and war (much in the manner of Terence Malick, but less oblique), and the cameos by both old and young and old actors create wonderful funny and touching moments.A woman is forced by circumstances to abandon city sophistication--a lover, smart clothes, new American music--and without much choice must marry a weathered old woodsman she earlier helped save from death...

As long as there are wars and womenfolk to revere, the feisty spirit of Scarlett O'Hara will never die. The story of a privileged beauty who is transformed by war and sacrifice into a paragon of resilience keeps popping up in film: Catherine Deneuve in Indochine (1992), Sandrine Bonnaire in East-West (1999), Nicole Kidman in last year's Cold Mountain.

"Zelary" is a WWII picture that is unique--something I appreciate since there are just so many WWII films. It begins with Eliska fleeing the city as her resistance group has been detected by the Nazis.

This wonderful film almost lost me in the opening scene which is devoted to some explicitly athletic sex. Oh dear...