The Country Teacher

2008
6.9| 1h57m| en| More Info
Released: 27 March 2009 Released
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Synopsis

A gifted and well-qualified young teacher takes a job teaching natural sciences at a grammar school in the country. Here he makes the acquaintance of a woman and her troubled 17-year old son. The teacher has no romantic interest in the woman but they quickly form a strong friendship, each recognizing the other's uncertainties, hopes and longing for love.

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Reviews

Supelice Dreadfully Boring
Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation
Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
mike dewey Our teacher (P. Liska) in question leaves his prestigious job at an equally prestigious school in Prague to assume a far more mundane position in the Czech country-side. He looks lost, bewildered and reticent, speaking only when absolutely necessary. Is he hiding something, fearful of past skeletons in his closet coming to the forefront to haunt him mercilessly?He settles in with a small farm family consisting of a woman and her son, who have their own fair share of past trials and tribulations unto themselves. An old mate of the "teach" (our title teacher) from the city finds his way out into the country to find our protagonist teacher and sparks immediately fly. Our "teach" has suppressed his homosexual orientation to all in the countryside and yet the mate from Prague, who was the teacher's former lover, is hell-bent on renewing their affair and is very demonstrative about it. "Teach" wants no part in it, as he wants a relationship based on love, not lust.Without telling too much more of the story line, suffice it to say that the old skeletons to which I earlier referred are brought to the forefront in a very skillfully paced manner by the director B. Slama. Teach's so-called search for love degenerates temporarily into deriving sexual satisfaction from the young son on the farm. The unsolicited advances by "teach" are strongly and virulently rejected by the young boy who now hates the new guest teacher. Now the teacher, the mother and her son have to deal with this new trauma, or closet skeleton, if you will, in addition to all their prior baneful experiences.Just how all these prior and new experiences will be met and subsequently dealt with and possibly sorted out lies in the hands of our skillful director and cast. What they do and how this is accomplished results in a tender yet forcefully portrayed set of scenes, where each of our protagonists has to deal honestly and openly with their strengths as well as their weaknesses and honestly open up to one another. What you may deduce from the movie's ending is that it is not an ending at all, but in fact a beginning, a Genesis, if you will!!
irwinnormal I saw this last year in a beautiful theater downtown where one sits in an easy chair and has a beer. I went with two friends. We went reluctantly, more for the chairs and beer than for any high cinematic experience; picking this movie out of a handful that were playing at the time. I think we were really lucky to see it. I wept a few times, with sadness in the middle, with joy towards the end. Very subtly told, beautifully shot. I really loved it. All the roles were well acted. The final scene was magical. One of a dozen movies that have ever moved me in this way. I'm very appreciative to the filmmakers. Thank you. And since I need a few more words for the ten lines.
mark buffalo "Country teacher" was the first Czech movie to be shown in Morocco during the European cinema week 2010 edition. The motion picture left the majority of the audience in a complete unease and resentment due to its depiction of Homosexual themes not fully accepted by the local culture. But what turned me off, was not the subject but the treatment of what seemed a genuine compelling premise.the first shots introduce us to the protagonist(Petr) getting used to his new life as a teacher of a primary school in a rural region, the cinematography at first captures the lush beautiful landscape in a smooth direct fashion in contrast with the confusion and unease growing inside the title character that obviously hides a terrible secret that prompted him to flee his urban life for a hideout somewhere. But what seemed a build up for a tense deep narration, gets clumsily wasted when a single scene tells us that pets is struggling with his homosexuality and the obtrusive control of his mother that happens to teach in the same high school he left. This revelations seems to the author/director so groundbreaking that he relies for the rest of the motion picture on emotional tear jerker situations and lines never fully explained and lacking a simple coherent narrative line. There was some attempt at graphic and verbal symbolism through some teaching classes about the animal realm and some shots with special attention paid to the background but the whole thing falls short of any valuable addition to the story since forced and not heartily composed.There's also the uneven insertions of the soundtrack composed solely of modern classical vocal solos that pops up out of nowhere and fades unnoticed.What really appalled me to finish with was the everybody-understands -forgives-themselves and everybody else ending. No denouement of the events led to what seemed a forced finale witch sole purpose was to transform the tortured souls into free forgiving new born persons that collaborate on a last symbol-loaded scene: the birth giving of a calf unwisely inserted into the narration but beautifully shot.Overall a weak entry of the eastern European author cinema, that needs more coherent narration if it wants to win over a reluctant Moroccan audience uneasy with queer cinema to begin with!
clg238 Although early on, an attentive viewer can guess at the ending (or a good portion of the ending), the film never loses its power. There are five strong characters in this film, and the relationships between them are wonderfully complex, as only a non-American film can portray. There are no simple answers here; life is complicated, even in a Czech farming village. By the time the film ends, we know exactly what it would be like to live in this place, what we would do for work and fun, who our friends would be, what the future would hold for us. Although much of this view is filtered through the main character, the teacher, his non- judgmental approach allows us to appreciate how things are in a world different from ours. From the outset, the teacher clearly has secrets; this, oddly, does not drive the plot as much as the question of how he will integrate into an environment different from the world of Prague and elite schools that this son of a woman science professor used to inhabit. This film, sans car chases, sans bombs, sans gratuitous anything, is mesmerizing.

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