Křižáček

A meditative journey taken by a devastated father to find a lost son is unexpectedly convincing, for a Czech movie. Visually and in terms of production design it can compete with foreign productions, although in places it’s terribly drawn-out and boring. The quest for longer footage is masked by artistic intention, but after a while it becomes very obvious. the ever reliable Roden, mostly silent with a gloomy expression on his face, doesn’t get the chance to impress us with his acting. The fact that the movie ends without any lesson whatsoever is disappointing. Daring, yes, satisfying, not really. Also the TV channel has locked aspect ratio settings, which makes watching a little unpleasant. P.S: The “road movie" subtitle was added just to attract attention. No road appears in this movie. (30.06.2018)

The Little Crusader delivered what I expected. It satisfied me visually. And it brought a bit of the Middle Ages into Czech film, which never hurts. It’s just a pity that it was made in such an artsy way as in this movie. It is obvious that the ordinary consumerist audience will not be able to appreciate the Little Crusader’s approach. Slow pace of the narration, static shots, zero storyline… we get all of that in the Little Crusader. Despite that I still took a certain liking to it; perhaps it was the connection of the atmosphere and the music, which made me keep watching it and wait where next the creators will take me in Medieval Europe. (20.07.2018)

The comparison of film to Plato’s Cave is quite fitting, but in the case of Little Crusader, it’s appropriate in the sense that the shadows come to life thanks to the fact that the audience itself is projected into them. Those who connect with their own parental anxieties at the beginning are ahead of the game. For others, the fundamental obstacle is the absolute vapidity of the characters and the lack of any tension that would spark viewers’ attention as in other, similarly stylised films. However, Kadrnka and co. placed in front of viewers several obstacles that can draw their interest to somewhere completely different. In practice, the film is rather more reminiscent of a happening, where it soon becomes more interesting and entertaining to not watch the screen, but to observe the screening room or try to tune in to the film and watch it only as a mechanical form. Little Crusader is not a flawless film, but it is good that it was made and that it got the grand prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. It invites us to recall the fundamental argument of the heated debates around genre production in Germany: Is it okay when ten imperfect genre films are made instead of a single excellent one? Yes, because cinema is not a collection of isolated exceptional works, but an entire interconnected world whose inhabitants stimulate each other. (14.07.2017)

There was only one Vláčil, this doesn't even come close. It's not a pose to say that I really like slow-moving films with an emphasis on atmosphere, but this one wasn't atmospherically slow, just annoyingly slow, and in the first half it was visually like a production of the Brno Czech Television Studios, full of static declaiming dummies. Just the kind of post-revolutionary pseudo-art by a fresh FAMU graduate who thinks he’s the shit :o) (21.07.2018)

An instance of cinematic poetry with a nice 4:3 composition (which keeps nothing but the essentials in the picture), creative ideas on the part of the director (using the sound of a window banging shut) and an ambiguous conclusion that lets the viewer think. Little Crusader has a slow and lengthy yet harmonious and compact narrative. It is a film made exclusively for the most discerning viewers who are fans of Andrei Tarkovsky or Béla Tarr. P.S.: Why didn’t they choose to shoot in black-and-white? Ordinary viewer will not watch this anyway and playing with light and shadows could have had a greater impact on the target audience. (08.08.2017)