Using the life of bees as its central metaphor, Jakubisko’s sweeping film chronicles the ups and downs in the life of a family during the thirty-year period prior to World War I in a remote Czech corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The family patriarch (Kroner, of Shop on Main Street fame) is a bricklayer and beekeeper who in the film’s first part sees his family through tribulations, intrigue, and considerable sexual activity. The later part of the film focuses on the nationalist political activities of the son (Kvietik). Made in a grand and beautiful cinematic style, the film won many prizes at international festivals and was named best Czechoslovakian film of the 1980s by the nation’s film critics.