A leading director of the Czech film renaissance provides a philosophical meditation on life and death, set amidst complex hospital apparatus and the sadness, hope, or resignation of the patients. Existentialist rather than optimist, the approach is one of humanistic atheism, accepting death as part of life. Interviews with doctors and nurses explore their outlook; all speak of death as a fact, without either sentimentality or religiosity. The studied objectivity of the film only imperfectly hides an intense emotionality.
Tag: CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Robert is delighted when his father returns from Africa with a baby chimpanzee which he names Tereza. When Tereza is kidnapped, Robert, his brother and friends, search the city and foil the kidnappers.
Jakub, a dreamer and budding magician, juggles between parcels and services rendered to the villagers. His eyes cross that of the beautiful gypsy Jolanka. Together, they will try to live a first and big love, despite the pressure of their respective communities.
A view of man’s perpetual struggle for self-destruction, in which we glimpse a world where rockets are part of everyone’s lives. In the end the red button is accidentally pressed by a careless caretaker, expressing the fear in all our minds.
After an attack on the Third Reich guard, the Nazi repression intensifies, and the organized sabotage of the Czechoslovak resistance in an airplane factory leads to Gestapo shootings. Now factory worker Petr Lom must make a choice: Is he prepared to sacrifice his life to save his co-workers?
Sonya is the inheritor to the riches of a Czech noble family – the Hajns. Petr, a social climber marries her, ignoring the shady goings-on, especially an insane uncle who prowls the mansion thinking he is invisible, a peccadilo the family seems to bear with and entertain. The mad uncle stalking every corner of the house, popping out of cupboards and curtains slowly takes its toll on the young bride.
The story of a man who finds himself in a hospital with a suspicion of a serious illness. He is rethinking his life so far, and his encounters with close and foreign people also create the image of the society of the 1960s, full of hope and disillusionment. The author raises here the basic problems of human existence, questions of freedom, loneliness, non-communicativeness, the search for the heroes’ own identity and their place in society.