661 Marketa Lazarová

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jindianajonz
Jindiana Jonz Abrams
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#151 Post by jindianajonz » Fri Jun 13, 2014 9:43 am

The release date for the English translation has been updated to June 21st

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jbeall
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#152 Post by jbeall » Sun Jun 22, 2014 10:06 am

jindianajonz wrote:The release date for the English translation has been updated to June 21st
I wouldn't hold my breath; they keep pushing the date back, and now that 6/21 has come and gone, the novel still hasn't been released. And if I'm not mistaken, the project's been passed from one translator (Alex Zucker, who has a short essay in the Criterion liner notes) to another (Carleton Bulkin).

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Lachino
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#153 Post by Lachino » Mon May 02, 2016 7:32 pm

jbeall wrote:
jindianajonz wrote:The release date for the English translation has been updated to June 21st
I wouldn't hold my breath; they keep pushing the date back, and now that 6/21 has come and gone, the novel still hasn't been released. And if I'm not mistaken, the project's been passed from one translator (Alex Zucker, who has a short essay in the Criterion liner notes) to another (Carleton Bulkin).
It's (apparently) finally here, with shippping dates as follows:

UK: May 25, 2016
US: July 6, 2016

I preordered, I love the film so much that I don't care if the novel is "untranslatable".

Werewolf by Night

Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#154 Post by Werewolf by Night » Thu Jan 19, 2017 11:03 am

The translation is now available, I just got a copy from the library: http://a.co/eomrImT" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Sloper
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#155 Post by Sloper » Thu Jan 19, 2017 11:33 am

Yes, I read it a few months ago. I'd love to hear from someone who knows the original and can speak to the accuracy of Bulkin's translation. It's a very strange novel, as obscure in its own way as Vlácil's film was when I first saw it. I plan to read it again more carefully soon, but I was particularly struck by the ambiguous tone of the narration, and the seemingly very complex use of irony. The narrator is a bit like one of those jaunty narrators you get in medieval texts like Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, Chaucer's dream visions, or The Romance of the Rose, who seems capable of shifting between absolute earnestness and playful distance, so that there's no stable set of values or principles guiding your interpretation of the text. Marketa can be a poor innocent victim one moment, a laughably fickle whore the next - which perspective carries more weight, which one is to be taken ironically? This ambiguity seems to reflect the instability of the time and place in which the story is set. However, after just one reading I don't feel very confident making judgements about the novel. I'm sure that learning more about its author and its context would also help.

One thing that surprised me was just how much Vlácil's film altered and added in adapting the story to the screen. Huge liberties were taken in terms of both content and structure.

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Morbii
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#156 Post by Morbii » Sat Mar 11, 2017 8:59 am

Just finished watching this out of my haul from the flash sale, and I must say you guys championing the film were definitely not wrong. So beautiful and surreal. And the wild sound mix heightened that big time. Beyond just being blown away by the film itself, the wild animal shots in general were incredible (all of them, basically).

I don't have much to add to the conversation at this time, but felt I should ask if the director's other work is also this sublime, and if so, what's the best one to pick up next?

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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#157 Post by MichaelB » Sat Mar 11, 2017 9:47 am

Marketa is Vláčil's masterpiece, no question, but you're unlikely to feel short changed by either of his other medieval films (The Devil's Trap, 1961; Valley of the Bees, 1967) or the early The White Dove (1960). Adelheid (1969) is much less flamboyant, but one of the more intelligent films about a notoriously tricky period (the immediate postwar forced population shifts). Of the later films, my favourites are Shadows of a Hot Summer (1977) and Serpent's Venom (1981), although these films were made under far more creative restrictions than his 1960s output.

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Morbii
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#158 Post by Morbii » Sat Mar 11, 2017 11:01 am

Thanks, Michael!

I'll start with Valley of the Bees. Ordered the Second Run DVD. (Guess I'll have to "slum it" as there doesn't seem to be a BD out there that I could find).

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MichaelB
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#159 Post by MichaelB » Sat Mar 11, 2017 1:34 pm

There are no other Vláčil BDs that I'm aware of, although I'd love to be proved wrong.

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knives
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#160 Post by knives » Sat Mar 11, 2017 11:39 pm

I'm not as well versed as Michael, but want to at least second his recommendations, and wordings, of the Second Run released films. White Dove is a very beautiful film with a surprising amount of emotion packed in.

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Morbii
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#161 Post by Morbii » Sun Mar 12, 2017 5:57 am

Thanks, knives. I remain bowled over today by what I witnessed last night. If not for the growing kevyip, I might even have put it right back in the player tonight. I feel that the Criterion descriptions can sometimes be a little hyperbolic (even if the films they describe are often fantastic), but to call this film a "revelation" almost feels understated. I will definitely be checking out more!

As an aside to querying about his other works, does anyone know why the aspect ratio of the Marketa scenes in In the Web of Time seem to be 1.77:1 or 1.85:1 instead of 2.35:1?

Calvin
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#162 Post by Calvin » Sun Mar 12, 2017 6:17 am

I suspect the next Vláčil film we see on BD will be Adelheid, owing to the recent 4K restoration. However, I haven't heard anything about a release; there was some controversy around the restoration, that led to an attempt to unseat the director of the National Film Archive but I'm not sure on the specifics.

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bottled spider
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#163 Post by bottled spider » Sun Mar 12, 2017 3:15 pm

I first saw Marketa renting the Criterion DVD, and subsequently bought the Second Run box set. Which made me realize how very much that 4K restoration had to do with the impact of my first viewing. The sharper image gives the Criterion disc an instantly visceral effect missed in the Second Run. Having said that, the Second Run box set was entirely worth it for Adelheid alone.

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jbeall
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#164 Post by jbeall » Sun Mar 12, 2017 3:43 pm

Morbii wrote:Thanks, Michael!

I'll start with Valley of the Bees. Ordered the Second Run DVD. (Guess I'll have to "slum it" as there doesn't seem to be a BD out there that I could find).
If you check out the threads dedicated to Second Run's other releases of Vláčil films, you can get a pretty good sense of whether or not to move them up in your kevyip pile. I think Valley of the Bees is outstanding, and thematically similar enough to Marketa... that you can think of them as companion pieces. And Second Run's transfer of Valley is definitely better than their Marketa (though I don't fault SR for this; IIRC they couldn't wait any longer on the restoration and had to push the release out).

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MichaelB
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#165 Post by MichaelB » Sun Mar 12, 2017 4:32 pm

The restoration happened many years after Second Run's release.

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swo17
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#166 Post by swo17 » Sun Mar 12, 2017 6:53 pm

I first saw Marketa from the Second Run DVD and was still able to be blown away by it.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#167 Post by FrauBlucher » Mon Jun 04, 2018 6:55 am

I rented the DVD over the weekend. What an amazing film. I was blown away by it's beauty and poetry. Just stunning!! One of those films that just stays with you and doesn't let go. Can't wait to pick up the blu and watch again.

moreorless
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#168 Post by moreorless » Fri Jan 11, 2019 7:13 am

Shrew wrote:
Mon Mar 03, 2014 7:15 pm
As for the murder scene, I recall the image of Christian after his death looking "ideal." His clothes don't look disheveled and his face is clean of all the mud that was on it earlier. I took that image as the "fantasy," a moment when Alexandra suddenly either recognizes him as he was when she first met him, or remembers how she fell in love with him.

I'm not sure where you would get an alternative narrative from the sequence. Christian's father and the other Gremans doesn't seem to be present in any form in order to influence the images or sounds we're seeing.
You could argue I spose that the scene is showing the narrative as they consider it to have happened and Alexandra's reaction draping her head over him does give the scene a bit of a sense of the unreal as does his changing appearance. That does feel a bit out of line with the rest of the film to me though which might be confusing and obtuse but generally truthful.

My original take was that she being arguably the most pagan influenced of the family has some kind of physical ideal, when she's walking nude it seems to play that up on her side and she rejects Adam when he loses his arm. So perhaps being confronted with the mentally damaged worn out Christian causes her to lash out at his imperfection and then the shot afterwards of him looking his old self is her returning to her senses and realising what she's done.
Last edited by moreorless on Fri Jan 11, 2019 7:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 661 Marketa Lazarová

#169 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Dec 14, 2021 3:47 am

To take a stab at the discussion question posed a couple pages ago, "Why is the film named after Marketa?": I believe Marketa represents the enigmatic blending of corporeal 'grace' (or as close as one can get to it in this milieu) with willful challenges to these mythical ideas that consume and drive the behaviors of the other characters. She might be the only character who grows in any meaningful way. To reframe Matrix's keen observation about this being a space where St. Francis had not arrived, Marketa serves as that figure: a genuine innocent, who through selfless pacifism and absolutist purity brings light into the peripheries of even the most myopic, morally-deteriorated characters, because she herself can see far and wide. However, what the film seems to posit without any didactic answer is whether or not (or, more generously, how) this 'grace' belongs or functions meaningfully with these limitations. Is she actually the wisest and most spiritually-fit character, or are her actions (or inactions) born from fruitless naivete?

I like to believe that even if there is not objective meaning present (after all, there is an intentional irony in how she's introduced praying to God to spare a situation from happening which goes unanswered, while her father's prayer elicited a divine response in his first scene- and one of them is certainly more virtuous than the other!) that the beauty by which she's framed, the sharp observations or her observing, and her resilience in recontextualizing her own attacks to stay grounded -embracing the fluidity outside of her control with humility and acceptance- are all subjectively vital to appreciating the power of nature, a higher power, and our relationship to it all, depicted in this film.

Her presence is also contrasted with the monk- a failed and compromisingly selfish St. Francis imitator, posing as the 'solution' when that's precisely what the film is rejecting on terms of cosmetic consciousness. Simultaneously, she stands her ground to soberly question ideas from those around her- not subscribing to others' terms, especially in the end. Early on, she's able to push back against her father for his treatment of Mikoláš and the monk, but later she is more aggressive and poised as she confronts Mikoláš and rejects her path in the nunnery. She can see the monk for who he is in the finale, snub him to venture on independently, yet still devote herself to nursing the innocent children in the next stage of her life. Her development is sourced in an awakening from these surrounding traumas, but she never breaks into moral disintegration like her peers. Instead, Marketa retains -and miraculously unlocks greater depths of- her character, even as the exterior innocence fades with grating experience.

Her evolution is that of a complex, imperfect Saint- like Lenny Belardo only without sprawling dense characterization; rather, her realist progression is refracted through the surreality of style and mise en scene. Marketa, and all she represents on the celluloid itself -from the striking experimental visuals to the elliptical narrative emulation of time, space, and memory- is the key to ascending the harsh terrain of this environment into the possibilities of the sublime, oscillating between yielding and asserting agency with deliberate and perceptive care.

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