For all its outrageous primitivism, and brutality, Vlčil's mad epic was a harbinger of the Prague Spring and undoubtedly, during the course of the long winter that would follow, a reproachful embodiment of its blighted hopes.

By now, this burly, seething musk ox of a movie, arguably the most convincing film about the Middle Ages ever made, should be on everyone's tongue.

In less than a minute, before the film's opening titles even conclude, Marketa Lazarov has announced itself as something potentially unique, perhaps indefinable.

[An] all-time masterpiece of the Czech New Wave.