Parallel Evolution. That’s the only explanation I can find.
Here we have two movies with a remarkably similar story, which came out the same year and only three months apart: the first, Joe Dante’s shaggy dog of a science fiction epic, Explorers, and the other a little-seen Czech children’s film.
There’s no way they saw Joe Dante’s film then rushed their version into the theaters. Not a film this complex, filmed mostly on location, and filled with special effects.
A young boy who gets caught in a tiny hole in the cliff during a big storm discovers in school the next day that he can remember everything he read while he was there.
When his two friends demand to know how he did it, the three go back to the mountain and start experimenting: soon, they’ve memorized more things and learned that it only takes a tiny chip of rock from the cave to cause this strange effect.
But as they explore around this mountain, which has a strange history attached to it, they discover that the rocks from other spots on the mountain have different powers.
Eventually, they find a tiny crack opening deep into the mountain only to have their dog disappear down it.
They come back the next day, with ropes and climbing gear, but once they take a second look at the crevice, the dog leads them deep down into the depths under the mountain where they make a remarkable discovery…
This was yet another experiment with autosubbing, and sadly, it did not work very well this time. Czech is one of those languages which has never autotranslated well, and it really comes as little surprise to me that voice recognition software doesn’t do a very good job on it, either. So I really wish I knew a lot more about was being said in most of the film.
But even though I was struggling to understand what was going on, it proved a very compelling sort of film, with a lot of subplots and undercurrents.
Despite the fact that it isn’t until quite late in the film that they finally descend into the Earth and make their strange discovery, most of the plot summaries of Treti Sarkan I’ve seen come straight out and tell you what they do find. There is a lot that happens after they get down there, and a quest they have to carry out, but it still takes up a fairly small part of the film.
Instead, as in Explorers, there is a slow buildup that is the best part of the film. The boys carry out their experiments, do a lot of research into the legends surrounding the place, and ask a lot of questions. Ultimately, their journey is as important as the mystery at its end.
And I think that is what gives Treti Sarkan an almost classic quality. It is a story about a group of curious and intelligent boys on an adventure, an adventure that takes them further than they ever expected.
Now, for those of you who associate science fiction with effects and spectacle, I will point out that Treti Sarkan does have its share, although they are used somewhat sparingly. They are backed up with some dark and brooding real-world locations and excellent makeup effects, not to mention the gloomy and gritty cinematography which makes the scenes near the end feel like we are on some unknown and hostile world.
The scenes after the big reveal are unreal and unearthly, with a lot of simple but effective design for the sets (if you watch carefully, you might spot the moment where they accidentally reveal with a careless shot that what looks like a big, glowing sphere is actually a trompe l’oeil painting on a flat disk).
The later sequences in the film remind me of some of the dark, sober and gritty Soviet films of the same era as The Veldt [Veld] or The Messenger, although the surrounding story which is centered on the three children, is lighter and more humorous as they play, explore, and seek out more answers for the strange things they encounter.
It’s a fine children’s Science Fiction film, one which it seems a shame hasn’t been seen much outside of Czechoslovakia.
But then it is also one of those films I wish I had been able to follow better, as I would love to know more about the Three Dragons and the history of the mountain, and to have a better understanding of the quest they have to complete later on.
Oh, well. Maybe one of these days we’ll see voice recognition software improve even more.
Or some human translator will create a far better set than any machine ever will.
Either way is fine with me…
rivets on the poster 