Cyril and Methodius – The Apostles of the Slavs (2013)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Nice effects though.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

This audiovisual piece exists in two versions: there is the theatrical cut with runtime slightly above 80 minutes and then there is a TV edit, a four-parter 4x 52 minutes in a form of a docudrama. The film is narrated by one of the protagonists, Methodius (Roman Zach), the docudrama adds contemporary narrator with explanatory notes.Overall I prefer the TV cut because the amount of the material that got edited out is simply horrendous - the first episode of the TV cut gets narrowed down into five minutes of the film, even the Constantin's speeches (that I consider the best written parts of the script) almost disappear in the theatrical cut. TV cut contains much more CGI sequences, that maybe aren't that well made, but some temple interiors are really magnificent.What rules the both versions is the soundtrack, that often borrows from the liturgical texts in contemporary, but also in archaic Czech. It's too bad that the soundtrack isn't available.The acting... well, I appreciate the above mentioned Roman Zach, since I remember him mostly from third rate soap operas. Here he gives a really solid performance, rising above his acting colleagues. The honorable mention goes to - for me previously unknown - Kajetán Písařovic (this simply has to an alias, nobody is so cruel to name one's child with such name, and I am saying that as the native speaker) in a position of the main villain, Frankish priest Eiben. He is so incredibly snake-like, especially when he advises the Louis the German while the king takes a bath... though I can't say in his final appearance if he is so fascinated by the flames that destroy the lifelong written work of the both protagonists or if he is shocked by the the consequences of his meddling...I intend to learn more about the production history of the piece, since the director Petr Nikolaev works mostly on the topics from near or far past, this film being the most far yet (end of ninth century AD). This film could be considered a companion piece to his older project Knights of blood (aka In the Name of the King), which takes place in thirteen century. Both films share similar, one would say, TV-Look, among other things. Overall, it's not a bad attempt, bud especially the film version is simply lacking...BTW, considering the poster (and DVD cover) - neither Cyril nor Methodius' faces are shown, the man above them is prince Svatopluk.