There’s an underseen film called The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, where some English miners from the Middle Ages tunnel through the earth and emerge in modern-day New Zealand. Watching Marketa Lazarová feels a bit like that in reverse – you leave your comfortable 21st-century life behind for a few hours and pop up in medieval Bohemia.
Director František Vláčil (Adelheid, The White Dove) spent around two years filming on location, which meant his cast and crew were afforded barely much more luxury than the story’s characters. Few films have such a feeling of history – not in the studious sense of dates and places, but of deep dark waters of time rolling beneath the keel of the present day’s unsteady ship.
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Few films also match Marketa Lazarová‘s dazzling visuals with such authentic production values, so while the virtuosity of Vláčil’s film making often distracts from the story, the credibility of its setting is never in doubt.
Based on the novel by Vladislav Vančura, which in turn was based on an ancient Czech legend, the film declares itself a “Rhapsody” on the title card. That might seem a little precious, but Vláčil is a director who freely admits to valuing visuals over story, and by dispensing with most conventional narrative techniques creates a film that is both lyrical and rhapsodic. It is perhaps best enjoyed if you can forget the story and surrender yourself to it as a purely sensory experience…
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Czech Film Review 