A Song About the Gray Pigeon
The war through the eyes of children from a small village in the middle of Slovakia in a set of micro-stories, limited by the time from the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising to the first post-w…
A Song About the Gray Pigeon
The war through the eyes of children from a small village in the middle of Slovakia in a set of micro-stories, limited by the time from the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising to the first post-war days. The leitmotif is an injured wild pigeon who gets shot down with a slingshot by one of the boys on a school outing in the mountains (Vinco) and another boy (Rudko) who is taking care of him until it gets healed and released back into nature. The gray pigeon accompanies the main characters throughout the whole movie and is a certain symbol of hope in war times. There are only a few war movies that can be described as a mixture of beautiful and poetic and rough and unforgiving at the same time. The director however avoids scenes of explicit violence and gore despite some chilling moments that keep the viewer at the edge of the seat. Scenes like the teacher turning once again Nazi collaborator after the first shootout with the Germans and subsequently getting shot in the back by one of his students with a rifle from the distance or a woman giving birth to a child in a burnt-out house being helped by a Russian partisan while a troop of Nazi soldiers is combing through the surroundings, really stun the audience! Even the little boys singing and caroling, unfortunately, cannot distract the troops from locating the whereabouts of the two women. Amazing, even almost magnificent camera by Vladimir Jesina and his views, including vistas and soffits, sensitive screenplay by Albert Marencin and Ivan Bukovcan, and especially an excellent selection of actors make this one of the most suggestive and interesting Slovak movie works of all time. It's almost unbelievable that in the case of Stanislav Barabas it was his debut as a director. All the children actors deserve praise and admiration, but most of all Pavol Mattos in the role of a bit of a rebel Vinco, the sexton's son. Pavol Mattos was able to perfectly portray the transformation from a child to an adult man. A nice children's war movie with a sad ending - running into a minefield shortly after the war in order to set the pigeon free at the spot where it was caught does not bode well for one of the main protagonists.
A Song About the Gray Pigeon
Drama,War
Film Details
The war through the eyes of children from a small village in the middle of Slovakia in a set of micro-stories, limited by the time from the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising to the first post-war days. The leitmotif is an injured wild pigeon who gets shot down with a slingshot by one of the boys on a school outing in the mountains (Vinco) and another boy (Rudko) who is taking care of him until it gets healed and released back into nature. The gray pigeon accompanies the main characters throughout the whole movie and is a certain symbol of hope in war times.
There are only a few war movies that can be described as a mixture of beautiful and poetic and rough and unforgiving at the same time. The director however avoids scenes of explicit violence and gore despite some chilling moments that keep the viewer at the edge of the seat. Scenes like the teacher turning once again Nazi collaborator after the first shootout with the Germans and subsequently getting shot in the back by one of his students with a rifle from the distance or a woman giving birth to a child in a burnt-out house being helped by a Russian partisan while a troop of Nazi soldiers is combing through the surroundings, really stun the audience! Even the little boys singing and caroling, unfortunately, cannot distract the troops from locating the whereabouts of the two women.
Amazing, even almost magnificent camera by Vladimir Jesina and his views, including vistas and soffits, sensitive screenplay by Albert Marencin and Ivan Bukovcan, and especially an excellent selection of actors make this one of the most suggestive and interesting Slovak movie works of all time. It's almost unbelievable that in the case of Stanislav Barabas it was his debut as a director. All the children actors deserve praise and admiration, but most of all Pavol Mattos in the role of a bit of a rebel Vinco, the sexton's son.
Pavol Mattos was able to perfectly portray the transformation from a child to an adult man. A nice children's war movie with a sad ending - running into a minefield shortly after the war in order to set the pigeon free at the spot where it was caught does not bode well for one of the main protagonists..