'Country Teacher' a Czech lesson in tolerance, love

“The Country Teacher” might be seen as a “To Sir, With Love” for the decade of “Milk” and “Brokeback Mountain.” But it's also an ode to the rejuvenating power of nature and the simple life.

The film will be shown Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Historic Yuma Theater, 254 S. Main St. The screening, part of Arizona Western College's “Thursdays at the Theatre” (formerly the Sun Cinema Series), includes an independent short film and a hosted discussion. Language is Czech with English subtitles. Run time of the feature is 115 minutes; admission is $5.

Peter, who has been teaching science at an exclusive prep school in Prague, shows up for his new appointment at a schoolhouse far out in the country. The principal, disdainful about the abilities of his rural students and realistic about the low salaries for his teachers, predicts that Peter will last for six months tops in this new situation.

He also assumes that Peter is running from something or is in some kind of trouble. We feel, however, that the principal is just a thick-headed cynic and that Peter has simply come here to be closer to his first love - nature.

Maybe the principal has more insight than we give him credit for, though. It turns out that Peter is at least trying to distance himself from his domineering mother, who teaches at that same urban prep school. And then there's the girlfriend who left him to marry someone else. But neither of these is the really bad relationship Peter needs to forget…

One of Peter's new-found pleasures in this pastoral setting is finding a haystack to read in. That's where the neighbors find him one day while they're gathering hay - an independent widow and her 17-year-old son, who together raise a substantial herd of cattle.

It doesn't take Marie long to show she'd like a relationship with the teacher, but Peter isn't interested, presumably because she's much older. But she'd still like Peter to tutor her son, Lada, who hasn't showed much aptitude for anything other than playing video games and rolling around in the hay with his big-city girlfriend when she visits her country relatives on weekends.

None of these relationships is what it seems, though. And the dynamics will become especially complicated when Peter gets a visitor from the city, a dashing boor who drives a red convertible and smokes designer weed.

In a single evening of excess, the many interweaving threads of jealousy, betrayal and longing will change the lives of all the characters and stretch the possibilities of human forgiveness to their limits.

“The Country Teacher” features especially strong performances by lead actor Pavel Lizka, who worked with director Bhodan Sláma on both his previous features, and by Zuzana Byzoyzká, who plays the strong but troubled Marie.

For such a simple setting, the plot is rich and complex. The past of these two main characters, involving domestic abuse and infidelity, parental dysfunction and homosexuality, convincingly informs the deceptively placid present, which will explode into multiple variations of unrequited love.

The rich colors of the Czech countryside will provide an idyllic backdrop, though, for the possibility of redemption and forgiveness for all those involved. Those film fans who need an especially blatant image of rebirth will be treated to scenes of a calf being pulled into the world with a rope.