"Zelary" fits into two new sometimes intersecting genres of World War II films that reinterpret history as inspired by true stories -- Eastern European ones that claim their territory was full of anti-Nazi Resistance conspirators and protesters and Western romantic ones that exaggerate women's roles, as exemplified in the recent "Charlotte Gray" and "Rosenstrasse."
Both genres tend to focus on the deprivations of noble gentiles rather than the genocide of the Jews. In "Zelary" we only hear in passing about "those who left." Gee, I wonder who had to leave.
We follow a sophisticated medical student as she flees the city and her doctor lover co-conspirator because of their clandestine courier activities.
Her escape to the countryside and arranged cover marriage to a kindly lug seems to dumb down her brain through the beautifully changing seasons as her very long sojourn in a primitive village is peopled with what in the U.S. would be hillbilly, peasant stereotypes of tolerated drunkards, abusers, rapists, pedophiles and idiots such that I could not figure out why the Nazis bothered to patrol every now and then. So not only do we get the usual Paris Hilton in the boonies incompetencies, but she forgets her education during this idyll and is taught from scratch by the local midwife.
We do get some flashes of protective women's solidarity among some independent women, especially with only some of the menfolk off to war and the ones who are left ravaged by alcohol, but people's motivations are pretty inscrutable, including why all it takes is a nice bath to make her sham marriage genuine, in scenes very like "Under the Sun." Or maybe it's just her falling into the native fatalism that pervades the village and grounds down the movie as well.
The drama perks up towards the conclusion in a touch of "Cold Mountain" as the bloody chaos of the war's ending portends worse problems with the Russians than they had with the Nazis.
Both genres tend to focus on the deprivations of noble gentiles rather than the genocide of the Jews. In "Zelary" we only hear in passing about "those who left." Gee, I wonder who had to leave.
We follow a sophisticated medical student as she flees the city and her doctor lover co-conspirator because of their clandestine courier activities.
Her escape to the countryside and arranged cover marriage to a kindly lug seems to dumb down her brain through the beautifully changing seasons as her very long sojourn in a primitive village is peopled with what in the U.S. would be hillbilly, peasant stereotypes of tolerated drunkards, abusers, rapists, pedophiles and idiots such that I could not figure out why the Nazis bothered to patrol every now and then. So not only do we get the usual Paris Hilton in the boonies incompetencies, but she forgets her education during this idyll and is taught from scratch by the local midwife.
We do get some flashes of protective women's solidarity among some independent women, especially with only some of the menfolk off to war and the ones who are left ravaged by alcohol, but people's motivations are pretty inscrutable, including why all it takes is a nice bath to make her sham marriage genuine, in scenes very like "Under the Sun." Or maybe it's just her falling into the native fatalism that pervades the village and grounds down the movie as well.
The drama perks up towards the conclusion in a touch of "Cold Mountain" as the bloody chaos of the war's ending portends worse problems with the Russians than they had with the Nazis.