Shades of Fern

Well, the life of a desperado is not an easy one. Some films romanticize criminals and their actions, but Shades of Fern is devoid of any glamour and shows the raw, hopeless path to damnation. The initial shunt and rebellion against morality do not lead to greater freedom and a carefree life, but rather to an exhausting escape from responsibility and human justice. Stress and fear (feelings of guilt?) lead to the exposure of characters and a crisis of personality. It's probably Vláčil's darkest film, without a trace of hope. Vláčil filmed it during a period of his alcoholic excesses, and although the director's surroundings tried to support and substitute for Vláčil, it did have some slight effect on the film. Overall impression: 85%. (01/06/2022)

For the haunting ending in the potato patch and the monologue to the starry sky, I have to give it a fifth star and place Shades of Fern among Vláčil's less striking, but still excellent films. The script had been waiting to be realized since 1968, and Vladimír Körner thinks that this was to its detriment, because a lot had changed and the poetics of that time were in many ways different from the poetics of 1984. Today, however, we can look at it differently again. From our point of view, the then large difference of sixteen years no longer means as much. The story is actually almost a gangster story with a philosophical overlay (again, you can use the comparison to Malick's films and it won't be the least bit funny), well acted, extremely beautifully shot and with excellent music by Svoboda. Yes, it's slow, but that's good. (27/10/2015)