Marketa Lazarova (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Marketa Lazarova on DVD (Second Run)
This movie from 1967, set in the 12th century, is very hypnotic due to it's vivid images (mixing wide screen landscapes, extreme close ups and moving camera), different modes of narrative (text tableaus, voice, flashbacks, memories) and eerie middle age-like music (it's actually electronic music with voices created specifically for the movie).

In this movie there are no clear cut good vs evil and no typical villains and heroes (maybe for the exception of Marketa Lazarova herself who has some saint-like innocence). The people are more the products of the harsh social and religious environment of the dark ages. The plot is better experienced than talked about in advance. Haunting, complex and spell-binding, this is a very good movie, much better than the historic epics produced by hollywood every year.

The transfer is excellent (I watched it on a projector) with beautiful black/white (it's hard to think of this movie being made in colour).
This is the kind of...

Tarkovsky meets Leone
If you can imagine a cross between Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev and Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West (all made within a year of each other), you might have a notion of what Vlacil's Marketa Lazerova is like. Throw in a dash of Bergman's Virgin Spring, and you're almost there. Named by Czech critics as the best Czech film of all time, Marketa Lazerova is a poetic social critique/examination of human kind, in particular when operating outside the confines of "civilization."

The film is set in the Middle Ages,* when family clans competed to rule the harsh territory seizing everything within their reach that they were able enough to claim and defend (not unlike the "old West" for a time), a time when religious and social order (established by the church, alongside the king and his army) was not fully accepted, and clans were used to operating in accordance with more primitive codes and authorities largely based around shamanic/mythic insights, the most basic offeudal ethics,...

Flawed DVD, Brilliant Film
**********SECOND RUN DVD REVIEW**********

Well, I have to disagree with the reviewers quality. The picture quality is not aweful, but certainly not what it should be. The blacks are muddled and the whites are grey. There is no streaking or debris to speak of, however. The problem probably lies with the scan resolutuin or scan process in general. The elements used seem to be fine, just an underfunded transfer would be my guess...

I give five stars because Second Run should be applauded for even releasing this DVD. The film itself is a ten star caliber effort!

If you like Rublev, or just have a love of Eastern European cinema from the 1960's, then this is for you. Beautiful 2.35:1 Black & White, nothing better in the world.

Click to Editorial Reviews