Film reviews

A tale taking place from spring to winter, in the course of the eighty years of a human life, consisting of seven elegiac stories which could have happened anywhere and anytime. They could occur even today, for they are about human love and passion, desire, obsession and selfishness, things that centuries have not changed.

The first, introductory segment, Wild Flowers, is about a mother who has just died and is being buried. Her orphaned children, though, will not suffer from loneliness, because her soul persists in the flowers grown on the top of the grave and stays with those who still love her.

Waterman is about the encounter and misunderstanding between two worlds. A young girl is loved by a water spirit and becomes his spouse. Both of them will pay for having broken the rules of their world: neither love for the husband nor that for their baby can overcome a call from the world that has been left behind, and when the girl’s mother selfishly rejects her daughter’s love for the waterman, he is forced to a fateful decision.

In The Noon Witch a mother irritated by her child calls down upon it the Noon Witch, to frighten it. The curse turns into reality when the evil spirit – or is it just the projection of fear onto an ordinary old woman? – really comes to take the baby with it. Nothing can save the baby’s life, for words that have been uttered cannot be cancelled any more.

In Wedding Shirts, a maiden prays for her beloved one to return from war and finally fulfil his promise to marry her. The young man returns and takes her with him on a night-time journey to the church where they are supposed to marry the next day. However, his violence and greed towards his love reveal him for what he really is: an Undead attempting to take her life. Still, the maiden’s faith is strong and that’s her chance for salvation.

The Daughter’s Curse centres on the last dialogue between a girl damned to death and her mother, and on the tragic misunderstanding between two generations. In the young woman’s heart there is only desperation, hatred towards the world and even towards her mother, who did not stop her from committing her crime, but encouraged her headlong rush upon the path of her desire in the hope of bringing her happiness.

The Golden Spinwheel is about a king falling in love with a maiden and wanting to take her to his castle to marry her. But the girl’s stepmother wants happiness for her own daughter, and together they will not hesitate to brutally murder the future bride. When her stepsister takes her place, a spirit gives back life to the true bride and unmasks the evil deeds of the two women.

The last segment, Christmas Eve, is about man’s desire of knowledge and about the disgraceful consequences which forbidden knowledge (of things one ought not to know) might bring. It is also about acceptance, when death is seen as the natural conclusion of a cycle. Life goes on, whatever may happen, and whoever may have been left behind: it is a continuous and everlasting circle which has as its guiding light mercy and hope.

The film transforms into motion picture seven ballads by Romantic Czech poet Karel Jaromír Erben, based on his researches on Slavic folklore. Despite being the transposition of poetry, it contains very little dialogue and chooses rather as its expressive means colour, music and imagery. Do not expect any special effects: the director managed to fit all the supernatural tension within a mythological setting based on the poetry of locations. It is a beautiful film, in the true sense of the world: its visual and emotional impact is enormous.

In the end, the only reason why the movie cannot deserve otherwise well-earned five stars is the fact that some passages, especially in the last segment, are hardly understandable by people who are not familiar with the original ballads. That is also why the movie never reached a wide audience outside Slavic countries.