Inhalte(1)
Within the environment of open cast brown coalmines and spoil tips which is a reminder of a lunar landscape, one finds paradoxically a true tale of an impregnable wild countryside. For most people it is a symbol of an ecological catastrophe, same as the abandoned industrial complexes, former army training ranges or dense woods gobbled up by the bark beetle. But for nature they are untamed spots which bring with them a process of recuperation and self-preservation. And Czech nature can thank one more thing for remaining untamed: such a variety is to be found in just a few places on Earth. Just beyond our backyard we see everyday dramas of animals and plants taking place which tend to fascinate us in films that come from the far reaches of our planet. Swamps, jungles and deserts can all be found here. The film crew is setting out on a twelve month expedition in order to explore Planet Czechia. (Verleiher-Text)
(mehr)Kritiken (2)
Besides several endangered and rare species, Planet Czechia presents us with one species that is unfortunately overly abundant. This is the aggrieved Czech guy with an inferiority complex. The film’s marketing is artfully deceptive, because instead of nature and animals in the Czech Republic, the documentary is more about the Czech Republic itself and the Czech guy documenting its natural environment. So it really pisses him off that some foreigners came long before him with projects like Planet Earth and thus stole his thunder. We also learn that everyone at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts considered him to be a weirdo who shot scenes at home by a pond on old black-and-white film stock and his daughters don’t show enough respect for his passion. But as we know from the subsequent success of Planet Czechia in the cinemas, everything has a happy ending, because that guy made a movie with which he outsmarted everyone else, struck a chord with both eco-liberals and conservative nationalists, made a boatload of money and showed what a great dad he is. In addition to all of that, the film also contains some very nice shots of animals and a few arguably simplistic bits of trivia passed off as ecology. Only the repetitive shots of copulating animals make the whole thing a bit more of a bizarre spectacle. Couldn’t there be a special edition in which it’s really just nature and optional scientific commentary instead of the egocentric oration of the filmmaker, which paradoxically makes it clear that, for him, nature takes a back seat to his own recognition?
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Es konnte so eine gute Doku werden, wenn Marián Polák hinter der Kamera geblieben wäre, wenn er den Hauptgedanken "das alles haben wir zu Hause“ nicht so oft wiederholt hätte und wenn die Darbietung von Kryštof Hádek eingeweihter gewirkt hätte. Die Aufnahmen sind nämlich schön und z. B. die Mufflons in der Nähe der Stadt Most sind eine absolut magische Szene.
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