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Bonus Ep 79 - Medieval (2022 Film) Review
🕑 Added 2025-01-31 13:00:11 +0000 UTCpatrons, here is your second bonus episode for January 2025.
folks, we do a fair amount of pop culture reviews on this show, ranging from timeless masterworks to genuine dogshit that should be locked away from human eyes. then some of them are just... baffling and Medieval is one such film. the title alone is maddening enough but what's on screen just compounds the confusion. it is at once filled with lush scenery and wide, establishing shots of the gorgeous Bohemian countryside and unflinching, well done gore but also totally lacks pacing, characterization, or even a real structuring narrative. but we do get to talk about Jan Zizka and it has honest-to-goodness wagon fort battles, so who's to say etc etc
Comments
eRahja
It's intresting that kingdom come deliverance (1 and 2) are based on the same time 1403. It might be that movie maker got the idea from gamemaker
lukeisamazing
Thanks for the suggestions!
Medard
A Czech native here, to answer some of your questions; the reason why the movie is so action-packed and lacks in basically any other area is because the director Petr Jákl was originally a stuntman, which is probably why he has such a knack for action scenes. He directed only two movies before that, the first one, Kajínek, was about a Czech contract killer from the 90s (who the film claims was completely innocent, which is... dubious to say the least) and the second one being a found footage horror called Ghoul, taking place in the present time and concerning Chikatilo and Holodomor (just to give you an idea about his historical and film making credentials)... Jákl was blowing his horn all around the Czech media scene when Medieval was released about how much historical research he had done to make the movie as much accurate as possible just to give us this blue-and-white piece of garbage... If you liked to see a much better film portrayal of Hussite wars which was made in the 50s and thus reflects the socialist ideology of the times, but is much more colorful and fun, I would definitely recommend the Hussite Revolution Trilogy by Otakar Vávra consisting of three two-hour movies, Jan Hus (1954), Jan Žižka (1955), and Against All (1956). Yes, they are more based on the historical novels by Alois Jirásek than the historical facts, but they are all hilariously anti-Catholic, pro-communist, and just look gorgeous in technicolor. Tbh, I became a patron just to listen to this episode in full and leave this comment, I doubt you'll even wanna watch any of these older movies but I'm sure you'd enjoy it. Thank you for the amazing podcast, been listening to this and Gone Medieval for a few months now and I really love your leftist take on history. Keep up the good work and thanks again.
