Venkovský ucitel

The film starts as a school teacher moves from teaching a school in the big city to teaching at a school in a small country village. It doesn't take long before it's clear that he's escaping something - desperately wanting to leave something behind and start over again. When his past catches up with him it becomes clear that there is no escaping it - you are what you are.

Set in a typical everybody knows everybody small village this film plays out pretty smoothly, telling its sad tale at a very steady pace. The actors are doing their jobs flawlessly, playing their roles in a most believable way giving the film a very "real" feeling and it becomes very easy to grow sympathy for the characters - enough to overcome the mistakes they make in their lives.

I guess one message the film is telling us is that the road to happiness is marked with pit holes and bumps and that it leaves you bruised and battered. It's a good message and makes for a solid but somewhat painful film.

8 out of 10 steps on a wobbly road

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.

Bohdan Sláma wrote and directed this sensitive and tender story about public versus private views of sexuality in the Czech Republic: his gifts as an artist of cinema are formidable. He knows how to tell a story, how to create a fascinating group of characters that with little dialogue speak loudly about human rights and understanding of differences.

THE COOUNTRY TEACHER ('Venkovský ucitel') opens with a young teacher from Prague who has joined the faculty of a small country school - an environment completely at odds with the rush and high life of the city. Petr (Pavel Liska) is a quiet, withdrawn, seemingly depressed young man who immediately connects with the students in his Ntural History class. The students and community accept this new gift to education in the provinces but wonder why such a fine teacher would leave Prague. Petr finds housing in a curtained room of a meager household and begins his quiet cloistered life away from what seems to be a traumatic escape from his home in Prague. We soon learn that in Prague, Petr had problems with a relationship and his fellow teacher mother cannot understand why Petr cannot find happiness as a normal married male. He confesses to her that he is gay and his mother (and elusive father) begin to understand why Petr 'escaped'. Back in his new country home Petr makes friends with a single mother Marie (Zuzana Bydzovská) who serves as both mother and father to her 17 year old son Lada (Ladislav Sedivý), a funky lad in love with a girlfriend whom he sees as his intellectual superior. Marie hopes to attract Petr but when overtures are ignored she instead engages Petr to tutor Lada. All goes well until Petr's ex partner (Marek Daniel) visits and disrupts the environment of Petr's closeted safe life. As Petr and Lada grow in their relationship as tutor and pupil, Lada discovers he can indeed succeed academically. After a night wen the two drink too much an incident occurs that unveils Pter's growing love for Lada and Lada leaves in disgust. The world explodes for Petr but gradually his honesty as presented first to Marie and then to his faculty begins a course of healing that leads to a touching closure of the story.

The cast is first rate and capably convey the spectrum of emotions that surround this little tale of discovery. How Bohdan Sláma is able to keep his story aligned in transferring between Prague and the little county province demonstrates a sensitivity to human interaction that is equal to the finest writers and directors. In Czech with English subtitles.

Grady Harp

Czech director Bhodan Slama's acclaimed The Country Teacher looks at love and loss at a rural dairy farm in the Czech Republic. It is a gentle, humorous, and often inspiring film about the struggle for self-acceptance and the resilience of people who must go through many spaces to discover that their lives work better together than apart. The film has gorgeous photography of the rural Czech countryside and includes the birth of a calf, perhaps an allegory for the need for three individuals to pull together. It is a narrative-centered film of considerable depth, one in which there is strong character growth and development, the kind of film Hollywood used to make.

When Petr (Pavel Liska), a gay teacher from Prague, arrives to teach science to youngsters in a small farming town, suspicions are raised by the principal (Cyril Drozda) about what he is running away from. The teacher, however, says everything is OK but his reticence and constant hangdog expression suggests otherwise. Petr manages to form a bond with a single mother, a fiercely independent cow-herder named Maria played by the exceptional Czech actress Zuzana Bydzovska. Distressed over the breakup of an abusive marriage, she looks to Petr to fulfill her needs but discovers in a hayloft that his needs may be quite different than hers.

Another example of unfulfilled longing is the relationship between Maria's lanky 17-year-old son Lada (Ladislav Sedivy) and Beruska (Teresa Boriskova), a girl visiting from the city who plans on studying law. Both seem to be involved with each other until Lada begins to question whether or not he is not smart enough for his more sophisticated girlfriend. Beru shrugs it off until she perhaps comes to the same conclusion and runs off with Petr's visiting ex-boy friend (Marek Daniel), a scatter-brained headhunter from Germany whose major talent seems to be one of disruption.

In one of the film's most revealing scenes, Petr visits his slightly overbearing mother (Zuzana Kronerova), also a teacher, in Prague and comes out to her after being questioned extensively about an ex-girlfriend. Though there is sadness, there is no bitterness or recrimination and his mother's only concern is that he is not alone. Petr is thoughtful and introspective and when he tells his raucous ex-boy friend that he will not engage in sex without love, we believe and trust him. Lada also trusts him as he begins to tutor him not only in Math but in life. Unfortunately, though the heart is strong, the flesh is weak and, after he rescues a drunken Lada from drowning, Petr gives in to his impulses and engages in some harmless but inappropriate touching when Lada is asleep.

Though there are the expected expressions of shock and name-calling, it is plain that the emotional bond that the three have formed outweighs their shock, even though it takes time for them to realize that. Backed by the gorgeous, meditative music of Vladimir Godar's Mater, The Country Teacher ultimately is not about coming out, however, but about coming to terms with one's own humanity. Pavel Liska is strong as the self-doubting, insecure teacher whose emotions range from love and longing to guilt and redemption and each person, in their own way, emerges from their own dark corner to reach a place of peace and self-acceptance.

In spite of some unwanted melodrama, The Country Teacher avoids stereotypes and achieves a searing emotional power by telling us that love is stronger than fear and that there can be no love without forgiveness, a sentiment that some film critics have labeled "implausible". I am reminded, however, of the country priest in Bernanos' novel Diary of a Country Priest, who said, "How easy it is to hate oneself. True grace is in forgetting. Yet, if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity as one would love any one of those who themselves have suffered and loved." The Country Teacher touches those moments of true grace.

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.