The Country Teacher

So I've just seen the movie and am really amazed. Slama has done it again. I am Czech and I must admit that I am very displeased with Czech cinematography of the last decade. Czech producers and directors make the same rubbish over and over again. I focus only on Slama as in my opinion he is the only exception. He proved himself to be the best we have now.

I absolutely loved his previous movie Stesti and I had very high anticipation concerning his new one - Venkovsky ucitel - The Country Teacher. And my expectations were fulfilled.

The movie is in some way similar to the previous one, not only in the choice of actors but also in the structure. The movie is pure drama around one man, but in fact there are three main characters and minor ones. Slama is very good in building the scenes and describing the characters. He introduces the key ones, shows us the surroundings and than he starts to develop the story he wants. He cultivates the characters and plays with the theme of the picture.

I don't want to go into details about the story. Watch for yourself, it 's very strong and very touching.

Throughout the whole movie I was amazed (again) by Slama's very subtle but in a way strong directing. Also the cinematography is perfect. All the actors did a great job and I haven't seen such good performances for a long time (certainly not in Czech movies).

All in all I was very impressed by the story, acting and directing. As far as I am concerned - Slama is still on the top.

If nevertheless should I say something negative I would have probably one thing - in the first half, maybe third, of the movie the editing seemed to me somehow "discontinuous". Like some cuts were a little bit too rash. But it was just my little feeling.

I definitely recommend this movie. Very good and deep drama and top- notch movie making.

The introverted Petr (Pavel Listka) arrives in a little Czech village to take the job of biology teacher at the local school. As Petr was raised in a teachers' family in Prague, we are led to wonder what he is looking for, or running from, in this secluded corner of the world. Contrary to expectation, he seems to be finding a place for himself. Again, contrary to expectation, it is all a little more perverse than you might expect.

As in director Slama's previous film, Something Like Happiness, the weight of depression looms over the characters. But it is not an unhappiness provoked by external factors (of say a job or poverty) but rather by the passions of the characters themselves. They are pushed in a direction which is not necessarily the "right" direction for them, and at the expense of themselves or others. Ridicule is no obstacle for the drunken suitor of the cow herder Maria, nor is humiliation for the young lover Lada. The characters do not have a self-control over their passions, falling victim to irrational needs which separate the civilized from the brutes. We could been tempted to attribute their lack of self-control to their provinciality, but our guide in this remote world, the educated Petr himself, is no stranger to weakness.

As we watch the story unfold amongst the birds and the bees, making up our minds as to why Petr is in that village and gaining an understanding of the side characters, I can not help but feel that the whole tragedy remains unconvincing. It is the great challenge of literature and cinema to render improbable relationships credible, but when you lift yourself out of the tale to calibrate, the discord becomes apparent. Or maybe we should ask ourselves if pardon should really be the pinnacle of love? A captivating movie with a few rough edges which does not completely win its bet. But you do get a tender insiders view on the loneliness and camaraderie of country life… if you want it.

This somewhat ironically titled Czech film, dubbed Best Queer Film at the 2008 Reykjavík Film Festival, depicts the experiences of a confused gay schoolteacher who moves from Prague to the country and falls in love with a straight teenager. He's not a country teacher. He is someone who has left the faculty of an elite school in the capital because it's too much dominated by his talented mother (Zuzana Bydžovská) and because he's broken up with his boyfriend, whom he never really loved. Presumably he's also on the run from his gayness, since he hides it now. The principal of the country school (Cyril Drozda) knows he's messed up somehow to end up here, and predicts he'll last no more than six months.

That's before the pensive Petr (Pavel Liska), who looks perpetually befuddled or depressed, runs into Marie (Zuzana Bydzovská), a weather-beaten widow with red hair and good bone structure, and her son Lada (Ladislav Sedivý), a beautiful, lanky youth who looks like a male model but thinks himself a loser. Together Marie and Lada run a dairy farm. Petr's new milieu is rugged, and the women are blunt and the men are blunter. There's much drunkenness on view, with smoking of joints, quaffing of beers and downing of shots, but no sign of fun, except when Lada's making out in the hay with his girlfriends, who don't stick with him long.

Despite emotional paralysis, Petr's physically quite presentable, and Marie signals interest at once, but he brushes her off. The reaction is similar but much stronger when, after much delay and and against his better judgment, he makes a pass at Lada. His former boyfriend (Marek Daniel) shows up in a fast red car, a yuppie headhunter who now lives in Germany. He again is rejected, and surprisingly runs off with Lada's girl.

Things go back and forth after that. Somehow when the film had barely begun I was reminded of Penelope Gilliatt's bittersweet screenplay for John Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody Sunday. The plots are utterly different, but there is the same focus on sexual ambivalence and compromise. The way The Country Teacher is resolved is all about making do.

Petr teachers his class about nature, and there are some none-too-subtle messages in what he has to say to his students at the film's beginning and end about, of all things, snails. Two calves' birthings also, one stillborn, one successful, have a similarly pointed message to convey. Why are Marie, Petr, and Lada all still together at the end after all that has happened? Surely not just to help a cow give birth. No, it's just that "everybody needs somebody," as Marie intones.

A sequence when Petr briefly revisits his parents in Prague and comes out to his high-powered mother, by way of explaining why he is not sorry a former girlfriend has married, seems from another more sophisticated movie, especially in the subtle way Petr and his bee-keeper father (Miroslav Krobot) interact.

Petr and Lada have both run off, and both come back. Petr surprises the country school principal by deciding to stay on after all, and when they express delight he pointedly tells them, "What if you were to know that I am homosexual?" Ah, well, that's an accepted thing now, the principal says, after a pause, and the woman teacher who's been hitting on Petr gulps and agrees. Perhaps Petr is growing out of being a self-hating homosexual. Still, Sláma has not indicated that he has prospects for a gay life in this rural setting (he may, but there's no hint of it).

Despite its frustrating half-a-loaf ending, The Country Teacher inspires sympathy for its main characters and makes them come to (limited) life. Too bad that Petr is such a doofus and that the film has only one strong, risky moment. Minor characters seem somewhat one-dimensional. This lacks the chaotic richness of Slama's 2005 'Something Like Happiness,' but in return it's a lot more clearly focused. At times the use of modern classical music is obtrusive, especially when Petr is tutoring the teenage Lada, who after all likes only loud rock and video games. Perhaps the art music is meant to tell us Petr is out of tune with the boy, but he's out of tune with us at that point too. We've had enough.

In limited US theatrical release (March following 2009), 'The Country Teacher'/'Venkovský ucitel' will be issued on US DVD September 9, 2009.

Our teacher (P. Liska) in question leaves his prestigious job at an equally prestigious school in Prague to assume a far more mundane position in the Czech country-side. He looks lost, bewildered and reticent, speaking only when absolutely necessary. Is he hiding something, fearful of past skeletons in his closet coming to the forefront to haunt him mercilessly?

He settles in with a small farm family consisting of a woman and her son, who have their own fair share of past trials and tribulations unto themselves. An old mate of the "teach" (our title teacher) from the city finds his way out into the country to find our protagonist teacher and sparks immediately fly. Our "teach" has suppressed his homosexual orientation to all in the countryside and yet the mate from Prague, who was the teacher's former lover, is hell-bent on renewing their affair and is very demonstrative about it. "Teach" wants no part in it, as he wants a relationship based on love, not lust.

Without telling too much more of the story line, suffice it to say that the old skeletons to which I earlier referred are brought to the forefront in a very skillfully paced manner by the director B. Slama. Teach's so-called search for love degenerates temporarily into deriving sexual satisfaction from the young son on the farm. The unsolicited advances by "teach" are strongly and virulently rejected by the young boy who now hates the new guest teacher. Now the teacher, the mother and her son have to deal with this new trauma, or closet skeleton, if you will, in addition to all their prior baneful experiences.

Just how all these prior and new experiences will be met and subsequently dealt with and possibly sorted out lies in the hands of our skillful director and cast. What they do and how this is accomplished results in a tender yet forcefully portrayed set of scenes, where each of our protagonists has to deal honestly and openly with their strengths as well as their weaknesses and honestly open up to one another. What you may deduce from the movie's ending is that it is not an ending at all, but in fact a beginning, a Genesis, if you will!!

Ahhh! The joys of the simple life....Yes, go hand-in-hand with the joys of a simple movie! Watching films from MANY different countries is an absolutely enthralling endeavor! Each nation's films tend to exhibit a peculiar cultural signature spin, that is a delightfully intriguing puzzle, waiting to be deciphered and savored. An appetite for Czech films is, however, undoubtedly an acquired taste.

Let me share some of the things that made TEACHER such a cinematic plum. Very In-Your-Face, but without ever trying in the least to be, is the physical appearance of the actors themselves. WOW! Talk about the antithesis incarnate of the 2 hours per day at the gym, capped-teeth-multiple-plastic-surgery-and-hair-implant, monthly-Botox-injections "LOOK" that seems to be practically the norm in Hollywood...This cast looks like they were sent from "Real-People'R'US", after dropping out of their weekly ReHab meetings!

Also, there were a couple moments in the film where I began feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the direction the movie began to go in, but before this discomfort escalated into something more serious, the movie veered off in a pleasantly unexpected direction! No formulaic Hollywood fluff, here...NO Siree, Bob!

Two cultural notes: Boy, these Czechs sure are at ease with nudity! People running around nude in the house, Hey, doesn't raise an eyebrow! Also, people are ever so cooperative with official government policy! Government says "No more discrimination against gays in the workplace!" and its: "DAH! Dee government says vee must do dis, so vee are on board...OK!" One pleasant and unexpected surprise...The Czech folk(?)music! Very soothing and haunting melodies. I'll have to ask some of my Czech students to fill me in! Be sure not to miss it! Recommended by a Friend...

8*STARS*....ENJOY/DISFRUTELA!

Any comments, questions or observations, in English or Español, are most welcome!