*CONTAINS SPOILER* I wish I could have seen this Czech fantasy film when I was a kid, because I know I would have loved it. A group of boys under the age of 16 find themselves on an unexpected journey by rowboat down a river of time that takes them deeper and deeper into "deep time" the more they row upstream. The boys are portrayed in a refreshing way and not as either a bunch of precocious smart-asses or total dweebs. In fact, they all seem to have been in the Czech equivalent of the Boy Scouts, because they handle their situation well. The viewer really gets a feel for what it would be like to be the only human beings around during the Tertiary period, the Carboniferous, etc. The environments are as difficult to traverse as any real-life wild place would be. In addition they are neither paradise nor horrifying. We have learned a lot since the 50s about the ancient Earth and know now that the boys would not be able to breathe the early Precambrian air. That's a minor problem.
Review of A Journey to the Beginning of Time
