The Valley of the Bees (1968) Brutal Middle Ages yarn with a sting in its tail

It’s easy to think about history in black and white. We’re not just talking about absolute morality here, oh no; some of the best period cinema of all time is defined by its monochromatic stylings, reducing the imaginative colour of times past down to stark impressionism. The leaders of Eastern European cinema were on the money: take Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, a pointedly washed-out biopic of one of Russia’s most tragic religious figures, leaving its single burst of colour for a moving finale reflecting on the man’s work instead of his life. In the 21st century, directors are still tapping into this vein: Rainer Sarnet’s remarkable folk-tale November casts an otherworldly spell with its high-contrast imagery, while the late Aleksei German plunged audiences into a suffocating world of darkness, mud and blood in Hard to be a God. Perhaps one of the lesser-seen greats in this stylistically-bold sub-genre is Czechoslovakian auteur František Vláčil’s The Valley of the Bees, an eye-opening medieval drama that caps off his uncompromising unofficial trilogy (preceded by The Devil’s Trap and Marketa Lazarová) on what it means to be a heathen, presented in a crisp new restoration by Second Run and bringing to the table a damning view of what black-and-white ethics can do in an unfair world.

Vláčil begins his tale in brutal fashion with a sequence of unspeakable violence: the piggish lord of Vlkov raises a hand to his son Ondřej after the boy gives an ill-advised wedding gift to the lord’s much-younger wife Lenora, striking a little too hard and leaving Ondřej on death’s door. Bargaining with the Virgin Mary, the lord asks of forces above to save his son, sending him off to the crusading Teutonic Knights to be nursed back to health in exchange for Ondřej’s eternal devotion to their cause. Years later, Ondřej (played as an adult by Petr Čepek) has forged a brotherhood with the devout Armin (Jan Kačer), a veteran of the Crusades whose religious fervour is only matched by his granite-like stoicism. Their bond is cleft in twain by Rotgier (Josef Somr), a defecting knight who sows seeds of doubt in Ondřej’s head, and it’s not long before Ondřej makes good his escape back to his old life, with Armin giving chase all the way home.

The journey taken by the two brothers in (and out of) Christ in this particular tale has significant stopping power. On top of the clearly-defined narrative strokes that pit friend against friend in various arenas, The Valley of the Bees deals in startling brutality that few of his contemporary filmmakers would have dared touch. The reality of violence in Vláčil’s world is sharply edited and staged for highest possible impact; he shows how deep one stroke from a broadsword can go into a collarbone, how a man might fall from a great height into a pack of dogs, how swift a cut throat can end the life of an unsuspecting victim. For 1968, Vláčil’s unblinking eye is deceptively pioneering, and his honesty deeply important.

Better yet, Vláčil does well not to let us totally into the mind of Ondřej; his actions are often rash and immoral, motivated certainly by a desire for freedom but driven by instinct that ranges from cunning to animalistic. He goes from pious to doubtful to outright base across a slick 99 minutes, Petr Čepek’s thick, furrowed brows containing multitudes of complex emotions and machinations. His pompous counterpart Armin is a great foil; Jan Kačer’s fair hair and chiselled features cut a more classic heroic figure, yet his main mission is pursuing the blasphemous at all costs, and that category extends to pretty much everyone he comes across. There is a vile torrent of misogyny that runs underneath the drama of The Valley of the Bees, never exploitatively, but virulently, informing the devastating ending with a wise old honest head. Věra Galatíková forms the weathered heart of the film as an older Lenora, a surprisingly diverse emblem of faith from the other end of the spectrum, providing yet more narrative friction as the two parties converge in an unforgettable ending. Vláčil shoots with elegance and precision, crafting impeccable compositions scored by endless atmosphere: pastoral idyll; the lapping of waves against a spiritual shore; the slapping of suspicious feet on the monastery floor; all parts of the spellbinding world of The Valley of the Bees, waiting for divine intervention against our fellow man.

Vláčil is a filmmaker to be held in extremely high esteem, an outsider of the traditional canon who deserves to be right in there with the greats. Companies like Second Run thrive on casting the spotlight on folk like him, and with this being the second of his films restored to this level of glory by the company, a bright future is destined for his underappreciated body of work. Their previous DVD boxset featuring four of his films is now out of print, but thanks to the new upgrades of The Devil’s Trap and now The Valley of the Bees, one can hope more is on the way. As a standalone story in a thoroughly complete trilogy, The Valley of the Bees stuns and stings, its quiet savagery echoing through the years to find us (and hurt us) today.

Simon’s Archive – The Valley of the Bees (1968)