Marketa Lazarová

A bold adaptation of a famous Czech novel about brutal conflict in 13th century Bohemia, and the struggle between power and innocence. Marketa Lazarová, the 1967 film by Czech writer-director František Vláčil, opens on a vast winter scene, wild horses running in the distance. A deep-voiced narrator says we are being told a series of stories that were assembled “almost at random.” We are plunged into a world of ragtag medieval warriors: stealing, fighting, and killing as they roam through a snow-covered landscape. It turns out that when the film says the stories are random and unworthy, it is seeking…