Acting
Soviet engineer Kuznecov is coming to Prague as an expert on work with the tunneling shield in construction of the metro. He is returning after more than thirty years. In May 1945 as a young soldier in the Red Army he was seriously injured in the liberation of Prague and while recovering experienced a great love with a young teacher called Vera.
The distressing fate of the Czech great Jan Amos Komenský, forced to leave his homeland after the White Mountain disaster. It depicts his encounters with various European personalities of the 17th century - the Queen of Sweden, artists and scientists. It emphasises the hero's nobility, but also his inner resilience, which allowed him to overcome many personal and professional tragedies. The parable of The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart becomes part of the story. However, Comenius's concept is sculpturally lifeless and, in particular, the religious dimension is "erased" from it. The simplistic biography therefore does not avoid schoolboyish dryness.
Director Tomáš Vorel created his experimental feature debut with members of renowned Prague non-traditional auteur theaters. The ensembles presented their own poetics and style through five "short stories" connected by satirical commentary by the "expert" Dr. Milan Šteindler, CSc.
In the second half of the 1980s, so-called critical films began to emerge, but they were afraid to make a sharper statement, moving on the basis of an engaged morality that wanted to improve the existing conditions cosmetically at best. The theme of the search for a new anchor in life becomes a central element: the protagonist, after returning from the war, does not want to devote himself to the constraints of elite sports, he rejects the dubious business of a friend. Most of all, he would be attracted to a perfectly ordinary job in a bakery. The dance clip inserts, however, make it difficult to navigate the already rather confusing narrative.
The film is based on a legendary school film of Tomáš Vorel, called INg (1985). The storyline stays the same - a young engineer finds a new job and wants to work, this proves to be impossible in the last days of the communist era.
The musical version of the successful play of Oldřich Daněk was transferred to the screen by director Jiří Sequens in 1986. It takes place in the 14th century in Bohemia during the reign of King Wenceslas IV. Heroes of the story are three mercenaries who always fight on the wrong side and are always beaten, but they are moral winners of all conflicts and skirmishes.
