Build a House, Plant a Tree (1980) Postav dom, zasad strom
Build a House, Plant a Tree (1980)
DVDRip | AVI | 592 x 448 | XviD @ 1458 Kbps | 88 min | 1,12 Gb
Audio: Slovak AC3 2.0 @ 256 Kbps | Subs (idx/sub): English, Slovak
Genre: Drama
DVDRip | AVI | 592 x 448 | XviD @ 1458 Kbps | 88 min | 1,12 Gb
Audio: Slovak AC3 2.0 @ 256 Kbps | Subs (idx/sub): English, Slovak
Genre: Drama
Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko resurfaces after a hiatus with this potent drama about Pavel (Josef Matus) an independent young man who defies the conventional wisdom. He rides freight trains wherever he feels like going and one day hops off a freight to land in a village he likes. It does not take him long to fall for Helena (Jana Siniakova) the divorced daughter of the head of the village, and though she reciprocates his feelings, her father is against their relationship. Ignoring his opposition, Pavel gets people together to help him build a house for Helena and her little boy. The trouble is, Pavel also ignores propriety in obtaining materials for the house and on top of everything, Helena's father decides he is not going to sit back and accept what is going on.
As you may know, Jakubisko got in quite a bit of trouble with the regime of normalization in CSSR - to the point where he was prohibited from making films at all. So, for nine years he busied himself with tv commercials and such.
Finally, in 1979 he was allowed to film again. He was understandably cautious at this point and 'Build a house, plant a tree' did not raise any controversies. However, he did not slide into complacency either. The feature about a mal-adjusted individual, ready to go to extremes in pursuit of his dreams, disregarding social and legal norms in the process. Alcoholism, drab existence, ineptitude, parochialism - hardly qualified as mainstream socialist fare
An additional interesting layer, which I, unfortunately, can not decipher, comes from locating the film in eastern Slovakia. That area is inhabited by people who call themselves Rusyns. They speak a distinct Slavic language and have only recently started to gain some minority rights in Slovakia (similar to what they had in socialist Yugoslavia).
It seems that Jakubisko is Rusyn and there likely was a certain intention in locating this film. It would be great if our Slovak comrades could shed some light on this issue. Hopefully, I am not entirely wrong here.
(click to enlarge)
Build a House, Plant a Tree (1980) Postav dom, zasad strom
