Tisícročná včela (The Millennial Bee) - 1983 - Juraj Jakubisko

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Tisícročná včela (Czechoslovakia, West Germany, Austria - 1983)

a.k.a. The Millennial Bee or A Thousand-Year-Old Bee

Comedy / Drama / War

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086447/

Pilsen Film Festival - WON - Golden Kingfisher
Venice Film Festival - NOMINATED - Golden Lion

At the dawn of the twentieth century, before he dies, Martin Pichanda, a farmer, beekeeper and seasonal bricklayer, imparted to his two sons and daughter a whimsical wisdom of the world. Thereafter, the three siblings and their own offspring begin to follow divergent paths whilst still living close to each other. Kristína is torn between her husband and an old flame, and when she is widowed, goes on to live in a ménage à trois with her lover and his awkward wife, subsequently bearing a child for all three of them. Valentín becomes a successful lawyer, which his pro-communist brother Samuel, a miller, views with resentment and suspicion, causing a divide that widens when the wealthier Valentín refuses to waive his part of their heritage. As decades and generations pass by, the ethnic and social tensions in the Pichanda’s homeland of the Hapsburg Empire deepen. Samuel loses his eldest son following police action against leftist demonstrators and, subsequently, his second son, a talented painter, during World War I. As a result, he turns to terrorism, something that will have far-reaching consequences, both for himself and, crucially, for others.

Despite a complex story, bewildering number of characters, and numerous surreal touches reminiscent of Jakubisko’s earlier films (for example a card game inside a whale, and a shower of frogs fifteen years before Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia), the allegory of A Thousand-Year-Old Bee was executed with such self-explanatory power and provided such a comforting myth of Slovak national history that it achieved unprecedented success within Czechoslovakia. Its ticket sales in Slovakia far outstripped any other Czechoslovak film in 1983, and it became the fifth highest grossing picture in Slovakia of all the Czechoslovak films made during in the last two decades of communism. Moreover, in a poll of Slovak and Czech film critics and academics taken over a decade after its release, it still ranked in the top five Slovak and top 25 Czechoslovak films ever made. As recently as 2002 the Slovaks still ranked Jakubisko’s film as their favourite domestic production ever, praise indeed for a magic-realist fable and exploration of the vagaries of myth, history and identity.

Video: XviD, 640x480, 25.000 fps, 1545 kbps, 02h41m34s
Audio: MP3, 48000 Hz, joint stereo, 192 kbps

original Slovak, Czech audio
optional Chinese, English, Spanish subtitles