The connections to silent cinema are stronger than ever in Jiri Menzel's latest film, in the beginning we even get mock-silent footage and intertitles, gags and pratfalls, and the protagonist is a Buster Keaton figure, dexterous and athletic and unperturbed by the world around him gliding through life untouched as though in a dream. I don't want to say that I don't like it because the German invasion of Czechoslovakia is treated as casually and irreverently, there's even a time and place for making light of war, and to the extent that the film's protagonist, the naive waiter at an upscale hotel in Prague, is swayed to one side or the other by apathy, good fortune, and innocence, Menzel is saying something about Czechoslovakia's attitude towards the Nazi occupying force.
In a subtle way this is as much a political film as Closely Watched Trains. When Hitler's speech in the Reichstag announcing the impending invasion is played in the radio, our waiter promptly switches station to a light dance tune. But we're shown other Czechs too, who resisted in their own ways, like the Mait'r D' of the hotel (who Served the King of England) and his contempt towards German customers. Near the end a train of boxcars filled with people takes off and there's no mistake what the final stop for the people inside will be.
Also curious is to me is the sharp juxtaposition between the waiter when he comes out of prison 15 years later a lonely man with sunken cheeks, and his younger self, who feels like a star of silent cinema, a figment of fantasy, and never like a human being. Or maybe not even sharp but jarring, in the sense that I can't quite figure out how the man we see come out of prison emerged out of what he used to be.
You said something in your description about 'being delighted' with the film, and that's spot on on the reaction Menzel is trying to elicit, also probably why I didn't like it. 'Being delighted' by a film happens very rarely to me. I'm not wired that way and it's just not a part of how I watch movies or why, sad bitter bastard that I am. It probably explains why I'm not the biggest fan of satire, of which there is plenty here. Still I smiled in a few spots, so there might be hope for me.
In a subtle way this is as much a political film as Closely Watched Trains. When Hitler's speech in the Reichstag announcing the impending invasion is played in the radio, our waiter promptly switches station to a light dance tune. But we're shown other Czechs too, who resisted in their own ways, like the Mait'r D' of the hotel (who Served the King of England) and his contempt towards German customers. Near the end a train of boxcars filled with people takes off and there's no mistake what the final stop for the people inside will be.
Also curious is to me is the sharp juxtaposition between the waiter when he comes out of prison 15 years later a lonely man with sunken cheeks, and his younger self, who feels like a star of silent cinema, a figment of fantasy, and never like a human being. Or maybe not even sharp but jarring, in the sense that I can't quite figure out how the man we see come out of prison emerged out of what he used to be.
You said something in your description about 'being delighted' with the film, and that's spot on on the reaction Menzel is trying to elicit, also probably why I didn't like it. 'Being delighted' by a film happens very rarely to me. I'm not wired that way and it's just not a part of how I watch movies or why, sad bitter bastard that I am. It probably explains why I'm not the biggest fan of satire, of which there is plenty here. Still I smiled in a few spots, so there might be hope for me.