Little Crusader

A meditative journey taken by a devastated father to find a lost son is unexpectedly convincing, for a Czech movie. Visually and in terms of production design it can compete with foreign productions, although in places it’s terribly drawn-out and boring. The quest for longer footage is masked by artistic intention, but after a while it becomes very obvious. the ever reliable Roden, mostly silent with a gloomy expression on his face, doesn’t get the chance to impress us with his acting. The fact that the movie ends without any lesson whatsoever is disappointing. Daring, yes, satisfying, not really. Also the TV channel has locked aspect ratio settings, which makes watching a little unpleasant. P.S: The “road movie" subtitle was added just to attract attention. No road appears in this movie. (06/30/2018)

In terms of being an attempt to make a meditative artistic film fresco, whose story is more of a parable about parental responsibility, Little Crusader is unprecedented in Czech film terms. As a film, however, it is only able grip the audience with its visuals, perhaps through the camera and Roden’s performance. He plays a character of a father looking for his son who loses his mind during the film, and that's about it. His simple, intellectually and desperately empty (content-wise) plot, inspired by an epic poem by Jaroslav Vrchlický, is so terribly stretched out and his scenes are so exaggeratedly long that it is simply impossible not to get bored. Extending a half-hour’s worth of material to three times the length is not a good idea, because film craft does not automatically consist of the ability of filmmakers to film the raising and lowering of a drawbridge so that it takes up three minutes in the film. Two thirds of the film consist of shots of a gloomy Roden riding a horse and the rest of children with palm branches. All that remains is the viewer's need to interpret what they see on the screen and look for different meanings. The dialogues are, of course, sparse, because this intimate crusader road-movie was supposed to mainly tell its story through pictures, but there is not much to tell. (07/11/2017)

I am thrilled that such a treasure as Václav Kadrnka and his film Little Crusader can emerge in contemporary Czech cinema. It evokes to me the magnificent films of František Vláčil, which is also a way of expressing my conviction that in black and white this work would be almost perfect. (80%) (10/19/2020)

An instance of cinematic poetry with a nice 4:3 composition (which keeps nothing but the essentials in the picture), creative ideas on the part of the director (using the sound of a window banging shut) and an ambiguous conclusion that lets the viewer think. Little Crusader has a slow and lengthy yet harmonious and compact narrative. It is a film made exclusively for the most discerning viewers who are fans of Andrei Tarkovsky or Béla Tarr. P.S.: Why didn’t they choose to shoot in black-and-white? Ordinary viewer will not watch this anyway and playing with light and shadows could have had a greater impact on the target audience. (08/07/2017)

The Little Crusader delivered what I expected. It satisfied me visually. And it brought a bit of the Middle Ages into Czech film, which never hurts. It’s just a pity that it was made in such an artsy way as in this movie. It is obvious that the ordinary consumerist audience will not be able to appreciate the Little Crusader’s approach. Slow pace of the narration, static shots, zero storyline… we get all of that in the Little Crusader. Despite that I still took a certain liking to it; perhaps it was the connection of the atmosphere and the music, which made me keep watching it and wait where next the creators will take me in Medieval Europe. (07/20/2018)