Buko is a joyous spectacle. It tells about human fear and the power of nature
Like the previous films (including The Trip, Mamas and Papas, Secrets or Revival), it reflects what the author and director are currently living and the things that are important to her. He captures his heroes, or to an overwhelming extent heroines, at a certain turning point, which is a test of their nature, life priorities and relationships and which moves them forward.
Do what you want yourself!
This also applies to the main female characters of the current film – the timid but headstrong Jarmila, who after the unexpected death of her husband decides to change her submissive way of life and settle in the countryside. And what’s more – in the company of a horse, which was bequeathed by her deceased husband and which she is afraid of. She deprives her loved ones, especially her daughter, of peace, because according to her, “she should do what she wants herself and not what her dad has planned for her.” But Jarmila is excited and attracted by the new and uncertain existence in a special way.
Applause for Il Boemo. Dyk’s performance and Mysliveček’s music captivated the audience
And so he solves the first practical things, writes a list of tasks and gets to know the local residents, life in the village and his companion, a retired circus horse. Their difficult “communication” and coexistence form the central message of the story, on the one hand a large animal commanding respect, on the other an aging woman angry because of her fear of him. Nevertheless, they are united by a similar experience – each of them is marked by a previous life of obedience and more or less unfreedom. For Jarmila, the path to understanding the horse’s soul is also a path to oneself.
Touch and humor
Alice Nellis can tell stories with a light pen, but with good observations, an understanding of her characters and insight into their fates. On her way to overcoming her fear, Jarmile helps ordinary people from her surroundings, of whom, unlike other domestic creators, the director does not make cartoons. Her villagers, unlike city people, do not talk much about life, but live it down to earth: a cheerful guy with experience with horses (played brilliantly by Martin Kubačák), a pragmatic neighbor with the face of Jana Oĺhová, and also a young autistic Tereza, for whom the presence of a horse is villages a big event and Martha Issová portrayed it in a captivating way.
Jan Žižka has arrived in Czech cinemas. Jákel’s medieval romance arouses emotions
The director expertly mixes serious and touching moments with humor. He benefits from everyday, well-known situations – from Jarmila’s charming struggle with the pitfalls of smartphones and online payments, from her daughter’s ironic remarks (“He didn’t even want to allow us a dog when he was alive, and now he’s going to give us a horse after his death?”) and the heroine’s clumsy rapprochement with Beech tree.
The scenes with Martha Issova provide the most fun, combining Teresa’s encyclopedic “lectures” on horses, which the girl spews at Jarmila in rapid cadence day after day, her stick-like escapes into the shoe closets, and physical contact with the horse, which, unlike He is not afraid of Jarmila, but demands to ride him. All of them, including Terez’s mother, tired of taking care of her daughter’s complicated personality (played by the actress’s real mother, Lenka Termerová), form the natural environment of the entire story.
Anna Cónová to be exact
Nevertheless, the center of attention remains Jarmila, for whom the director has found an excellent representative in Anna Cónová, a sixty-eight-year-old actress of the Moravian-Silesian National Theater in Ostrava. The theater and television actress had to wait until later in life for her first major film role, but her minimalistic performance, from which she manages to veer here into explosive emotion, is flawless.
Source: Youtube
The gallery of characters is completed by Petra Špalková and Jan Cina in the roles of Jarmila’s children, who react in different ways to their mother’s solitary life in the countryside and the mutual family relationships that the cursed horse strengthens and cements in the end.
And even though in some places some motifs seem slightly modeled and didactic (chastising children because of their mobile phones or a trainer played by Marian Roden demonstrating the rough dressage of a horse, serving as a didactic exclamation point that it shouldn’t be done that way), as a result, Buko is a pleasant and clever spectacle.
The life is Beautiful
With the help of her frequent collaborators, cameraman Matěj Cibulka (who offers poetic shots of morning fog, evening twilight and storms over the region) and composer Jan Ponocný (whose music gives the film a lively western mood in certain passages), the director composes a tribute to nature and its changeability. And its cleansing power, which has a significant effect on us, our desires and fears.
Through her heroine growing into self-acceptance and self-confidence, she casually reminds us that life is beautiful. Even if they put limits in front of us, with which we have to fight and which harden us.