The image of the escape of two Czech young men from the death transport is dynamised and deepened in meaning by the composition of associative retrospectives of the experiences and ideas of one of them. In the repeated projections of his dreams, fears and desires, everything human slowly gives way to animal, in proportion to the increasing pressure of threat. The naturalistically vivid materialization of the refugees' situation - their hunger, fatigue, anxiety, the urge for self-preservation - all suggest an attempt to save them at any cost. The pair become hunted game, hunted by the senile old men of the Sudeten village, depicting the rule of the powerless. The film depicts a stream of consciousness, transposing inner vision into an austere and original clenched form, revealing the depth of anguish, maddening abandonment, humiliated humanity, the impossibility to communicate with anyone and the torment of man as an alienated element in a hostile world. The leitmotif is the longing for security, presented as a longing for home. Němec's feature debut is one of the absolute best of Czech cinema. At the same time, it builds on his graduate short film Sousto, especially thanks to the camera, which admirably moves and draws the sadness and bleakness of the forest...
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