This is a 1988 co-production between Czechoslovakia and West Germany, adapting one of the arguably somewhat lesser known stories from the collection by the Brothers Grimm.
One after the other, three princes set out on a quest to find and bring back the fabled "Water of Life" to save their father and the kingdom. The youngest son is more virtuous than his brothers and manages to pass various trials on the journey. The film follows the source material relatively closely, but adds a few touches of its own here and there.
The best and most characteristic thing about this movie version is its art direction and look. In contrast to most other fairy-tale movies of East-European and/or German origin of the era between the 50s and the 80s, with their very classic and often a bit kitschy approach regarding sets, decorations and costumes, this one dares to try something different.
Color plays a big role throughout - the home kingdom of our protagonist is associated with many shades of red, for example reflected in both the floor of the throne room, the king's bed, and most notably the costumes of the royal family, though the latter change symbolically (without an in-universe explanation) with the plot to purple and blue. In this regard, it reminded me of Yimou Zhang's movie "Hero" (2002) with Jet Li.
Furthermore, everything looks rough and ragged, the castle dusty and ruined, and the décor kind of basic, instead of everything being shiny, clean, new and full of stuff. You won't find sparkling golden crowns here, it's all a bit more medieval Mad Max, the nature and the elements slowly reclaiming remnants of civilization.
Special effects are rather rare - don't expect something comparable to a Hollywood level budget - but the features mentioned above combined with some beautiful landscape shots and nice music make for a very dreamy, even almost surrealistic feel and viewing experience. One of the small highlights for me was the flooded castle of the Queen's kingdom with the Water of Life. Since it too is obviously a real building somewhere and not a set made for the movie, I still wonder how they accomplished this.
There are some issues, however. The dialogue is extremely sparse, even for fairy-tale films, to the point of possibly leading to confusion for everyone not at all familiar with this old folklore story. Multiple important plot points and intentions are not made clear enough, and while it may add to the otherworldly arthouse style also for the narrative, I feel like a bit of exposition at various stages would have greatly helped. While you can easily follow the main plot from beginning to end, too much is left open for interpretation regarding the details. The characters do not seem very clearly defined - the king being the sole possible exception.
Another problem is the pacing. The movie is about 90 minutes long, but measured by the actual story content, it should have been 75 minutes tops. Some scenes drag on slightly too long, resulting in a slow pace. Considering that our hero is just walking around for most of the runtime, and that we cut back to his brothers or his home with the old king a number of times, audience members not appreciating the aesthetic side of things in this may get bored fast.
Overall, worth watching if you like fantasy and old fairy-tale movies and want something a bit different than usual. Sadly, the home video release is nowhere to be found these days (there is a DVD cover uploaded to the IMDb page). I've seen the film about a decade ago on TV for the first time, and despite its flaws and shortcomings, it must have left an impression because I did remember it well. Like similar genre works of this time period (Die Prinzessin und der fliegende Schuster 1987, Die Sieben Raben 1993, König Drosselbart 1984, and so on), it could really profit from a proper blu-ray release in HD.
