Netflix rolls onward: Dark Blue World

So it's not like I don't have anything to write about but my movie-watching adventures...I do, lots of things, but quite frankly I can't be fucked. It's way easier to just write about my reactions to movies. The movie I saw tonight was called Tmavomodrý Svět, i.e. Dark Blue World. It was about the Czechoslovak pilots in World War II who escaped from the German occupation and flew for the RAF, and how all of them who went home after the war were sent to forced-labor camps by the Communists. The movie itself...well, I enjoyed it, because pretty much anything that lets me hear Czech words and watch lovely Czech boys is ok by me. But as a film, it wasn't all that good. It could have been. It had all these good elements, and good acting, and Lord knows a good director and screenwriter. But it didn't come together. It seems like that happens in a lot of Czech movies...the same thing was true of Horem Padem, another lauded Czech film. As a slice of life, it was excellent. But it didn't end up anywhere. It all goes back to the Poetics...bad things happening to a good man out of all proportion doesn't bring you a catharsis. And likewise bad things happening to a bad man. There's a middle path where the catharsis lies, and no light can show it to you. But the artist finds it, and it's no virtue or skill of his own that does so.

Anyway. I liked the documentary about the movie better than the movie itself, maybe. It was mostly Jan and Zdeněk Svěrák talking about their movie, and about what they really wanted to say about the Czech RAF pilots. Jan and Zdeněk are the father-and-son team that did Kolya, which is at least Number 3 on my list of all-time favorite Czech movies, and high up on my list of favorite movies of any stripe. During this documentary, they talked about heroism and the reasons men are willing to fight and die for their countries, more openly than any Czech I've ever encountered. Jan said, If you ask someone now if he would fight for his country, he'll say, I don't know...perhaps, maybe. But if you asked him if he would fight for his brother, for his family, for his dog even, he would say Yes! Without question, yes! And Zdeněk Svěrák said, You see? It's because people have forgotten what the word "country" means...



So that's the news from Lake Drowning-In-Law-School this week. I'm now working on finding a place to stay and plane tickets to the CZ this summer, which is exciting. I'm also trying my damnedest to try to prepare for the Big Bad Thing that lies between me and this summer, aka Exams. Dear Lord, give me strength.

Anyway. That is all. For now.