Zbehovia a pútnici (1968)

The first part of the film, *Deserters*, was inspired by Ladislav Ťažký’s short story *The Military Deserter*. The story takes place during the First World War. Kalmán, a Gypsy, can no longer bear to watch the senseless killing in the war and deserts, fleeing home. But he finds no peace there either. Inside, he is constantly haunted by the horrors of war, while in the village the gendarmes are after him. Jakubisko added another deserter to the originally literary character of Kalmán: Martin, a hussar, and a white hussar—the personification of Death, who eventually finds them both. “Jakubisko constructed the whole story as folk theatre. It is horrific, full of blood, yet somehow unreal. The actors, made up in an exaggerated manner, perform a kind of ghastly grotesque, made all the more striking against the backdrop of a quiet Slovak village.” The deserters’ persecution turns into their bloody revolt, in which, in the end, no one can tell friend from foe. The ending takes on a poetic spirit of reconciliation, as the dead come back to life and celebrate with the living. Only Kalmán and Martin remain dead, lying in the bridal bed, which should be a place where new life begins. And Death moves on, searching for happiness. The second story, *Dominika*, is also based on an idea from Ladislav Ťažký’s novel *A Cellar Full of Wolves*. It takes place at the end of the Second World War, when the village is ruled by a Soviet partisan unit whose suspicious commander regards every stranger as an enemy. “In extraordinary times, on the boundary between life and death, everything depends on the whim of whoever is stronger. And bad decisions that violate every norm of humanity can be excused as a principled defense of those very norms. After all, the one who survives will be right in the end.” After the war ends, when even those who have harmed one another celebrate together in the village, Nazi soldiers arrive and everyone massacres one another. At the end of the second part, however, no one comes back to life—only Death does. “I was shooting *Dominika*, I was three-quarters of the way through the film, and basically I was smiling at the situations from the Second World War, because it was all passé—but then I was delighted to see what a great production manager and prop master I had, since tanks drove into my yard. I even thought: Where did they get all those from? We don’t need that many for the film!” Marenčin advised him to leave it in, and explained in a voice-over what had happened: that day, Russian troops had entered Czechoslovakia and occupied it. Jakubisko took his advice and added footage from a black-and-white newsreel from the Kremlin to the scene. This insertion consigned the film to the vault for good. The third story, *Pilgrims*, written by Karol Sidon from his own idea, is an apocalyptic vision of the world after the Third World War. A woman—a nurse—and a man—Death—emerge from an atomic shelter. “The third part, *Pilgrims*, is a search for life. The girl, a mediator of life, searches for it, and Death searches for it too, because death cannot live without life...” They wander the world but find no people. They manage to leave the “lunar landscape” and find themselves in springtime nature. They find a human dwelling, but it is empty. The last two people on Earth resemble the first two—Adam and Eve—but this earthly paradise is already lost. “In the final part, *Pilgrims*, the relationship between death and love returns as a longing amid a universal apocalypse, with echoes of the first story. After the Third World War, Death is unnecessary, because there is no one left to kill. It is abandoned, like Christ (‘My God, what kind of God are you, that you have forsaken me?’) ‘... Among the corpses, it pleads: “God, please let me find people again. Return everything to the beginning—let me walk among them, let them be rebellious—so that in the end they will love me, as I love them.”’ Jakubisko’s film is more like a collage depicting senseless violence that breeds more violence, in which one person is another person’s greatest enemy. Seen as a whole, it does not matter whether it is set during the First or the Second World War. It depicts the eternal cycle of violence, which can have only one ending. The killing will stop only when there is no one left to kill.