DESERTERS AND PILGRIMS

This “anti war film“ filled with apocalyptic, surreal images in the spirit of Slovakian folklore is a tryptichon with the death as the leading character, appearing in each episode as a leitmotif: In “Deserters“, k&k field police chase a deserted gipsy during World War 1. Here death appears in the guise of an old mounted soldier. In “Dominika“, red army soldiers free Slovakia in 1945 – using violence against civilians (this episode from 1968 is intercut by Jakubisko with documentary material of the Soviet occupation tanks moving forward during the shooting of the film). Here death is a macabre corpse, rising again to mechanical life. And in “Pilgrims“, death as an old man climbs from a bunker in which the survivors of a nuclear third world war committed suicide. Now he in vain is looking for humans on the scorched earth and finally questions god who has made him – death – superfluous.