The Way Through the Bleak Woods

One of the most beautiful b/w films of the last 30 years, this is a romantic tone poem, set in a remote Eastern European community on the eve of WWI. Vojnár is less interested in plot than situation: only gradually does he suggest the social fissures that may tear the village apart through a subtle, elliptical succession of images and echoes. (Typical scene: bearded man walks through the woods in the snow, stops and sits.) Frustrating until you adjust to the pace, the film is deeply evocative, with some of the eerie resonance of faded still-life photography, a sense of time and place you can practically taste on your breath.