"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. She is set up to go with a simple peasant, Joza, to live as his pretend wife in the mountains of Czechoslovakia. Not surprisingly, at first it is VERY awkward but slowly the pair come to genuinely care about each other and actually live as a real husband-wife couple instead of just as a cover.This film is not for everyone. There is a lot of nudity. It doesn't necessarily seem gratuitous--just more matter of fact. And, there is some adult content, such as Russian soldiers raping the Czech women. Additionally, if you demand a nice ending, it also is not a film I'd recommend. But, on the plus side, the acting and direction are wonderful and the film is well worth your time. Well made but a tad bleak here and there.

Zelary is yet,another good find at the library for me. I hadn't heard of this film and I was sort of taken in by the unusual title. I watched it over 2 nights because I started the first 1/2 of the film kind of late. Otheriwse,I'd have sat straight through it. While it's true that there are elements in the film that have been used in other World War 2 dramas,that's a very small thing compared to the grandeur of the movie. It's (as mentioned in the DVD extra's) a love story. Two people get married to protect her from the Nazi's,who would have her executed for working against them. Sort of a marriage of convenience. What starts as something she's not looking forward too,blossoms into love between the two. Despite him being almost 30 years older. We see little of the German threat here but we know it exists,along with the threat of a young man wanting his way with her or he'll turn her in. The movie is more about how she truly becomes as one of the of the small village. The villagers are not 2 dimensional as someone mentioned,they are exactly as people were back then in the 1940s and farther back as well. The scenery is breathtaking and real which helps make it look as it did in that era as well. I feel all the actors did a fine job for a film that took 1 year and 2 months to complete. That long because they wanted authentic time and aging to happen,for a better sense of realism. It's nothing ground breaking but it was a very fine film to watch and become fully engrossed in. 9 stars,purely for being a good movie,with good drama and heart,as well as entertainment value. (END}

Anna Geislerova and Gyorgy Cserhalmi give strong performances as the lead male and female actors in this Slovakian love story set in World War II. Their love for each other evolves as the drama of Hana's escape from the Nazis unfolds in a remote farming village.The beauty and simplicity of Hana's surroundings and the gentle strength and caring of Josa gradually seduce her and transform her into a woman who can girlishly enjoy the simple pleasures of life without sacrificing her talents and ambitions as a member of the resistance.Excellent performances by this predominantly Slovakian cast, especially Jaroslav Dusek who shines in a minor supporting role as the teacher.

ZELARY (2003) is a small gem of a film that can stand up beside the great Czech classics of the 1960's – FIREMAN'S BALL and CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS. Using what is perhaps the Czech national literary character trait of understatement, director Ondrej Trojan crafts a richly detailed story about one woman's struggle to survive in a remote village during the WWII anti-Nazi resistance. Her small and compelling story stands on its own, but also subtly telegraphs the major themes of recent Czech history to those who can still read the coded language that East European artists from Kafka onward have trademarked.Viewers familiar with the twentieth-century Czech struggle as an emerging nation dominated by successive empires – Austro-Hungarian, Nazi and Soviet – will detect the larger themes that Trojan evokes in a narrative centered around the Czech anti-Nazi resistance: the threat of collective punishment, the ever-present dangers of betrayal, petty revenge and arbitrary violence in a values-corrupting totalitarian system, and the crushing of religion under communism. The iconic Czech resistance story – the assassination of Hitler's East European viceroy, Heydrich, by British-trained Czech commandos and the Nazi's retaliatory obliteration of the town of Lidice and all its inhabitants – is never directly mentioned but hovers just outside the frame, as does the brutality of post-war Soviet domination after 1948.Yet the magic of the film is that it does not labor under over-worked historical references but instead tells a finely acted and beautifully shot story about both good and bad-hearted villagers trying to make the best of life – in the inimitably Czech tradition of the Good Soldier Shveik – despite the absurd and arbitrary twists of fate created by war and evil empires. Trojan manages to craft an uplifting story about love and loss, resilience and sacrifice, that pays tribute to his "greatest generation," even though for the Czechs the WWII "liberation" from the Nazis meant another forty years of Soviet domination behind the Iron Curtain. Even the slightly awkward ending points hopefully toward the brighter future that Czech's rallied for during their 1960's "Prague Spring." What is perhaps most remarkable about ZELARY from a film-making point of view, is that fifteen years after the "Velvet Revolution" freed Czechs (and Slovaks) from the Soviet empire, it still speaks in the understated ironies and coded references that would have been needed to escape the censor's exacto-knife. Perhaps Trojan is now acutely aware, as an artist working in the free-market economy, that the details of his small country's history don't amount to a hill of beans in the world film market, but can still be subtly embedded for deciphering by his compatriots. Instead, he has constructed a finely crafted love triangle for a global audience that slyly reshuffles the CASABLANCA deck and casts Bogie as a semi-literate woodsman, while Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa is played by the nearly-as-luminous Ana Geislerova. In doing so, he preserves the best of the Samizdat underground literary tradition for film-making in the new global economy.