Who has peeked inside Czech Republic since the Oscar winning Kolya? This weekend we rented the movie a recent Czech film, Zelary (rhymes with celery). The Czech Republic is the star; this film really shows her off: the mountains, wildflowers, colors of changing seasons, snow.

Zelary looks back, with nostalgia, on the transition between WW II Gestapo control of the country and the Russian takeover. A short period of time existed between the two regimes. I can only imagine the impetus to make this film was for it to be a cultural reminder to the people of Czech Republic. It asks the big questions: Who are we? Were did we come from? Where might we be going?

Short synopsis from metaphor point-of-view: Female sexuality holds center stage and works as a metaphor for the Czech Republic itself. Within the feminine element the film plays out bigger themes of birth and death, oppression and freedom, tenderness and brutality, fidelity and betrayal, and most provocatively, the urban and rural.

The film begins with an "urban" sex scene set in a modern apartment with streamline furniture, lots of books, records and record player, leather chairs, satin sheets. Eliska, an OR nurse, and Richard, a surgeon, are active in the resistance movement. Both are well educated, well-groomed, wealthy, have attractive bodies lovely undergarments, and all of their teeth. They make love to a jazz recording.

Cut to an hour later when Eliska has sex with a country man, Joza. To save her own life and to hide from the Nazi Gestapo, Eliska marries Joza but consummation takes weeks--or maybe months. Eliska must embrace the countryside and with it her man. Though Eliska softens up, Joza still smell bad to her. If he wants her, he has to take a bath in the new wooden tub and use soap.

The rural lovemaking happens in a bed, as in the first scene. The mountain coupling is very tender and long-awaited rather than impulsive and without a clear understanding of the relationship between the man and woman. Eliska and salt-of-the-earth Joza snuggle down in an overstuffed feather bed with a rough frame and flannel sheets. Their cabin has a dirt floor, no electricity, a few pots and pans, and a midget-sized door they have to stoop under to enter.

After she falls deeply in love with Joza, Eliska is raped in a sauna by a local drunk who threatens to expose her past political activities to the Gestapo and therefore jeopardize everyone in the village who might have helped her hide. There are more brutal rapes: a mountain woman is dragged off by a troop of German Gestapo who have just killed her family because they supported partisans. When the Russians arrive after the Germans are defeated, they go on a rape rampage.

In Zelary, men are the protectors of the culture, the country, the women. Men also threaten the safety and dignity of the women. They are surgeons, priests, farmers, soldiers, foreigners, and countrymen. At the film's beginning, when the resistance leaders send Eliska off with the saw mill man, they tell her: "Joza is a good man. He will die for you."

Die he does. When the Russians are on their rape and pillage rampage, Joza risks his life to gather the lost and stranded members of his village and shepherd them to a safe spot. By accident, he is shot by his own villager. His death frees the woman.

Off screen Eliska returns to the city, completes her medical training, and becomes a doctor.

The last moments of Zelary are profoundly touching. Four or five years later, together with Richard (the surgeon from the first sex scene), Eliska returns to what remains of the mountain village. The only person still living in the hills, it the old `witch doctor' who wears a babushka and traditional country clothes. She is the woman who birthed babies, gathered herbs, and prepared the dead. The old and new women embrace.

I rented this film on the basis of a thumb-nail description of the plot. I'm glad that I did because "Zelary" is a quality movie. I had guessed that it was a Serbian film but I'm guessing it is a Slovakian (Czech?) film and that we were looking at rural life in the Carpathian Mountains during WWII. We discover early on that our heroine is knowingly involved in the underground/resistance in Prague. However, she didn't seem to have counted the cost because when something goes wrong, she's wisked away to safety off into the mountains. This was not her idea and she did what she could to reverse her fortune until it was finally spelled out for her. To be able to blend in to the tight mountain community, it is necessary for her to marry an older man she met in a hospital in Prague. That's as far as I dare go into the plot. The events and personalities that emerge from this 2 1/2 hour film make for a very engrossing movie. Naturally the concept of Nazi occupation (these folks are not Germans as they are quick to point out) adds a degree of suspense. The idea that our young heroine is in hiding expands on that suspense. However, there are other sources of suspense, excitement, humor, love, understanding etc. The relationship between the newlyweds naturally takes the forefront of the film. However, the supporting cast is very good and their roles and escapades make for a well-rounded movie.

The ending builds to a crescendo that leaves us rather emotionally drained (we're pretty involved with these folks by that point in the movie). The final scene was interesting. Maybe it was the fact that my surround sound was working well last night but I was captivated by the background music. It certainly enhanced the moods the film emoted. I also couldn't get over my impression that the leading man looked like a middle-aged Hugh Hefner on a moderate diet of steroids. There are a few times when I might have been as bewildered as our runaway bride but everything eventually comes together. If there was an overall message to be gained from "Zalary", I would guess it was, "You never know who your heros or villans will end up being". The cinematography alone is worth the price of admission.

As long as there are wars and womenfolk to revere, the feisty spirit of Scarlett O'Hara will never die. The story of a privileged beauty who is transformed by war and sacrifice into a paragon of resilience keeps popping up in film: Catherine Deneuve in Indochine (1992), Sandrine Bonnaire in East-West (1999), Nicole Kidman in last year's Cold Mountain.

Zelary is the Czech version, an old-fashioned character-driven domestic epic which was adapted from an novel by Kveta Legatova. Set in the Second World War against the background of the German occupation, the film was selected as the Czech Republic's Oscar nomination last year. A return to directing for Ondrej Trojan (Let's All Sing Around) after more than a decade as a producer, Zelary is a trite but sturdy offering, a showcase for popular young Czech actress Anna Geislerova, as well as the beautiful Moravian countryside, shot in glowing earthy tones.

Geislerova plays Eliska, a medical student who has been denied a chance to finish her degree because of the German occupation. She works as a nurse, but is also involved in the resistance movement with her lover, a surgeon named Richard (Ivan Trojan). One night a sawmill worker, Joseph (Hungarian actor Gyorgy Cserhalmi), from a rural community is brought into the hospital badly injured. Eliska provides the blood he needs for a transfusion. Shortly after, the Gestapo uncovers the resistance group that Eliska belongs to and she is forced to escape. Joseph, or Jova for short, agrees to take her back to his rural village of Zelary.

Initially the conditions, a dirt floor and no running water, shock her but she has no choice but to stay. She takes on an assumed identity, as Hana, and goes through a marriage ceremony to avoid suspicion from the local villagers.

Hana becomes acclimatized to her new housewifely life surprisingly quickly as she discovers, as women so often do in romance novels, that a hulking, taciturn man can meet nearly all her needs. Jova proves himself both a font of compassion and pillar of strength, providing Hana with a wooden floor and defending her from a rapist before they eventually become lovers.

While Hana bonds with her woodcutter, the script provides some welcome additional village texture. There's that Czech cinema staple, the precocious child (Anna Vertelarova) and her pragmatic widowed mother, as well as a bureaucratic school principal and his friend, a compassionate priest. There's also an ancient midwife (Jaroslava Adamova) who teaches Hana folk medicine. The most trenchant subplot concerns the local drunk who beats his wife and son: Their imprisonment serves as a contrast to the caring imprisonment that Hana faces.

The German army, lurking in the nearby hills, pops up periodically to add a jolt of suspense. Unfortunately, Zelary doesn't end with the war.

Soon the ruthless Germans are replaced by the loutish, drunken, raping soldiers of the Soviet army and Zelary is in for a whole new round of problems. By this point -- well past the two-hour mark -- the endlessly episodic nature of Eliska/Hana's trials begins to provoke fatigue more than sympathy. "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart," wrote the poet William Butler Yeats. And too much history can make any long-suffering heroine overstay her welcome. Conrad Alton, Filmbay Editor.

There are two films I can think of where the marriage theme would give any woman shivers. One is "Queen Margot" and the other "Zelary". "Zelary" story is placed in Chech Republic during WWII. The main female character is helping resistance and before long she is betrayed to Gestapo. To escape certain death, she is hidden in the rural area of the country where no one knows her true identity. To make sure she blends well with the locals, local priest, schoolmaster and her protector decide that the best thing to do in this situation is to marry her off to a local peasant. So here we have a former medical student, sophisticated and raised in the city, forced to marry a man she barely knows who seemingly has nothing in common with her. As time passes by and they get to know each other, they eventually fall in love with each other. I had a little problem with the way their relationship ends (a little bit too convenient for the purposes of the story closure, in my opinion). This is definitely a story of two people so different in every respect who fall in love with each other. It is almost as if the fact that the plot is setup during a WWII is more of a convenient background than anything else.

This is simply one of the best movies ever made. It has a beautiful story line, shot ina beautiful place, and unforgettable characters. All around joy and beauty, a fun adventure!