Film Review: Želary

Released in 2003, spoken in Czechoslovakian with English subtitles, Želary is a romantic period film. Taking place in Czechoslovakia in the early 1940s, Eliška (Anna Geislerová, pictured right) is a nurse who couldn't finish medical school because the Nazis were rising to power and closed the universities. Her beau, Richard, was a surgeon and was in the same predicament as her. Richard and Eliška are also apart of a secret resistance movement against the Nazis. One night a man from the country by the name of Joza (György Cserhalmi, pictured left) is rushed to the hospital after an accident during his job and he is in desperate need of a blood transfusion. Eliška has the same blood type as Joza and she saves his life; immediately they bond. However, the secret resistance group is discovered and the Gestapo is after both Eliška and Richard. Richard leaves the country but the resistance group must find a place for Eliška to hide so they ask Joza to hide her in the remote village he's from. He agrees. She flees from her comfortable city life to a rural moutaineous village called Želary .

They change her name to Hana and she discovers that the village people are very archaic in their beliefs and lifestyle. It is inappropriate for her to live with a much older man who isn't her husband so they marry and she says "I do" grudgingly. She does her best by cooking dinner, washing Joza's clothes, bringing him lunch at work, sewing, etc. They sleep in separate rooms and rarely physically touch each other. She socializes with some of her neighbors and discovers he is the lonely, odd, but nice, man in the community. All the other men in the village are curious as to how such a man ended up with a beautiful and much younger woman. Little by little his steadfast tenderness not only wins the audience but Eliška too. One night he enters her room and asks her permission to sleep in the same bed as he had been sleeping on a wooden bench. At this point she has already fallen for him and she agrees; they are intimate and this is the moment their marriage functions as a truly loving partnership. Their bond is enchanting and beautiful to watch on screen. However, their union is threatened when an unexpected visitor comes to Želary.  How the story unfolds is sweet, heartbreaking, and inspiring.

The music score is very European; long gorgeous lines of orchestral strings and lush sounds from the winds which evoke a vintage feel but also a very romantic feel. The score just about melted me!

Directed by Ondřej Trojan, this film was nominated for an academy award in 2004 for Best Foreign Language Film. Želary didn't have a large budget and I loved that. The Želary crew loved the story and worked hard to pull this off and they did. It's an absolute treasure and definitely worth adding to your DVD collection!