Alois Nebel [HD]

An EXCELLENT Czech adaptation of classic film noir story line
A stunning Czech adaptation in this black and white animated feature of the classic “deep dark secrets can’t be kept secret forever” _film noir_ story line. Mild mannered, somewhat dour Alois Nebel, lifelong resident and train station conductor at a small mountain hamlet on the Czech-Polish border finds he needs help regarding troubling dreams he’s been having regarding the fate of a ethnic German teenager who had been his babysitter when he was a child at WW II's end. But now it’s 1989 and Communist Czechoslovakia’s psychiatric establishment isn’t really geared to help troubled people get better but to keep people who can no longer keep their mouths shut, SILENT… Then a strange man in his mid 40s who’s silent (is he mute?) comes into town with an old photograph … and an axe… Much ensues …

Astonishing animated art-house drama
Bleakly beautiful, Alois Nebel is visually stunning and deceptively simple. The plot seems fairly straightforward - a tale of revenge and redemption in Eastern Europe, set when the Iron Curtain was collapsing in the late 1980s with echoes back to the Nazi atrocities of the war. And indeed, if this had been a straight live-action film then the story might have seemed a little thin...

...but the astonishing animation techniques used by the film-makers enhance the actors' performances and the narrative so that it's simply captivating. The live-action has been transformed into stark shades of blacks and greys in the style of a graphic novel (think Sin City Sin City Volume 1: The Hard Goodbye (3rd Edition): Hard Goodbye Bk. 1 (Sin City (Dark Horse)), and you'll be close). The treatment of light and shadow in the set pieces is breath-taking. The opening sequence of dark forests, sinister branches, stag's...

Stylistically strong and tonally mysterious. A clever and thought-provoking animated film noir for knowing teens and adults!
"Tricky film to place but a first for me to see this relatively underrated Czech film with English subtitles, black-and-white, and rotoscope-oriented animation (much in the vein as Waltz with Bashir and A Scanner Darkly). Set in the backdrop of the fall of Communist regime in Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia), it follows the story of Alois Nebel who is a train-station dispatcher keeping an eye on the timing and arrival but much of his work becomes hindered as he has multiple flashbacks from the past and decides to confront his horrors by taking on a kind of spiritual journey.

Much of the film is very quietly-paced with infrequent dialogue and much emphasis on emotions, facial reactions, hallucinations, and intensity. It also has a strong solitude aura in its narrative that is relatable to a certain degree where Nebel had nothing from his past childhood but now can fight for something in the future to come. The cinematography, the special effects and design...

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