Shades of Fern
Based on the only extensive prose work by the surrealist painter Josef Capek, Shades of Fern most resembles the philosophical fairy tales and fables of Josefâs older brother, the legendary Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Two young poachers, more boys than men, kill a gamekeeper when they are caught illegally hunting. Panicked, they retreat into a forest that grows steadily more forbidding and deadly as their fear for the futureâand guilt over their actionâmounts. Loosely based on hundreds of oral folk tales and legends that haunt the woods of Czechoslovakia, VlĂĄcilâs contemporary updating artistically underscores the relationship between man and nature, crime and punishment, isolation and society, and guilt and memory.
1986-01-01
