If a movie should be like a dream, then this Czech number is perfect.
Like my life, it’s a gorgeous dream interrupted by the odd nightmares.
The movie is filled with beautiful moments and beautiful works of art.
It is set in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and early 1940s.
It took me 20 minutes to get into it — until the first hottie showed up in the rain — and then I was swept away.
The images and story are constantly intriguing.
This film reminds me of Big Fish (with its imagery) and Cinema Paradiso (with its bittersweet tone).
Steve Brook posts to imdb.com:
Like the butler played by Anthony Hopkins in the 1994 film "The Remains of the Day", the waiter at the centre of "I Served the King of England" (Jiri Menzel, Czech Republic, 2006) is not interested in politics. Major historical events surround him, yet these completely escape his attention. His ambition is simply to become a millionaire, like the fat cats he serves at table. In 1930s Prague, Hitler, in Berlin, is making a radio announcement about his aim to "liberate" the Sudetenland. Bored, Jan Dite, the waiter, simply turns the dial to a dance music station.
He manages to float through the Nazi invasion, first of the Sudetenland, then of Czechoslovakia. By a combination of hook and crook, he achieves his ambition of owning his own hotel through the sale of valuable stamps, stolen from a vanished Jewish family. This does not give him a moment’s pause but later, when he sees a trainload of Jews in cattle-cars moving off to Auschwitz, he has a rush of compassion and chases after the train in an attempt to hand the deportees a sandwich. After the war, as a self-confessed millionaire, he is sent to prison when his hotel is nationalised. He emerges fifteen years later, older, but not much wiser. He is Schweik, but without the latter’s sly intelligence.
This sketchy summary cannot do justice to a film which has been described as a near-flawless masterpiece, in which "Prague has never looked better". It is permeated with the ironic wit which marked Menzel’s earlier films, such as the Academy Award winning Closely Watched Trains (1966). Dite befriends the German girl Liza, described by one reviewer as "the sweetest little Nazi in the history of the cinema". They are in bed, making love in the missionary position. Liza keeps pushing his head aside so that she can gaze at the big picture of Adolf Hitler on the opposite wall. Such was love in the Third Reich. The scene in which Dite is undergoing a racial fitness test which involves giving a sperm sample is intercut with young Czech men being unloaded from a lorry at an execution ground. Of this, Dite is blissfully unaware.
The Remains of the Day was based on a serious and perceptive novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. The genesis of I Served the King of England, by contrast, was a comic novel by Bohumil Hrabal, a book I cannot wait to get my hands on.
One That Got Away posts to imdb.com:
It looks fantastic aesthetically, cinematography is lovely, quite good and charming performances, very well-played under- and overstated humor, some nice quiet moments, and, yeah, the women are gorgeous.
On the other hand, most every female character in this movie is portrayed as either a Nazi or a piece of meat–sometimes practically literally! I’m hardly the most sensitive guy and even I took notice, and I know a lot of women in the screening did too because I overheard many of them complaining on the way out. It’s also a little directionless–where is the redemption of the protagonist? It can’t be as simple as viewing himself in the mirrors. And what becomes of his relationship with the promiscuous woman who is in with his neighboring tree-cutters? I felt it was just dropped–kaput!–after her pregnancy was revealed. For me to believe that opur protagonist would be dissuaded by that fact I’d need to see a change in his character and honor and the movie hadn’t given me that.
Dichotomy posts:
How many scenes did I need to watch with lecherous old men leering over the young, beautiful half naked women? Or women removing their clothes for the protagonist (who I thought was unattractive- man, that nose would turn me right off).
Was I alone in getting annoyed at the repeated portrayal of women as sex toys? A little better characterisation would have helped as the women were largely presented as enjoying the experience, which does not accord with the reality of prostitution.
Pedro writes: "I believe the answer to some of the concerns on this string is that the novel/movie is really a semi-surrealistic allegory about the inglorious role played by most of the Czech people during World War II – surrendered without firing a shot, for the most part collaborated or just went about their business, provided minimum help to Jewish victims, etc.. Don’t look for redemption because there wasn’t any."
This movie would make a great double feature with Gloomy Sunday: "Beautiful Budapest, end of the thirties. Lazlo Szabo a middle-aged jew Hungarian runs a chic restaurant with a beautiful waitress,Ilona who is also his mistress. One day they decide to hire a pianist, and it’s Ilona who choose. And it’s a good choice because the handsome young man, Andras, creates a wonderful mood on the premises. Little by little he falls desperately in love with Ilona and composes specially for her a song, very melancholic, and a bit misterious. He calls it " Gloomy sunday ". This song brings surprisingly a lot of suicides. The love-triangle functions pretty well until the time a german customer, Hans, who comes regularly in the restaurant falls in love with Ilona, without success.A few years later the german army invades Hungary, Hans is back as a highly placed officer and the jewish condition of Lazlo is going to complicate the lives of the four protagonists. This movie is a master- piece and I’d bet if the film had been produced in Hollywood with Stone, Douglas and Harrison Ford, directed by Cassavetes it would have gained several Oscars. It has all a movie fan can expect from a good film -and more. Beautiful scenery, very good story, marvelous music, talent of the actors, and even a bit of sex. I rarely see a picture twice on the same day. This time I did."
