Checking on the Czechs
Added 6/28/2009
This is a fairly recent film version of Bohumil Hrabal's novel about the short waiter and his adventures in the service industry.
I watched the DVD to check on my own take on the novel. I read and reviewed Hrabal's novel a few days ago and my conclusion was that I found the book admirable but not very likeable. I saw it as a bitter allegorical tale from a disillusioned man who had a low opinion of his countrymen.
The film is to some extent a rather literal adaptation of the book, except that it changes the time line (its starts with the narrator's release from Communist prison after an amnesty ... 3 months before the end of his 15 years term. As he says, he was always lucky...).
But then, it is also not very literal, it changes the book in many things. It drops some of the absurd scenes; e.g. the orgiastic party of the President of the Republic with a 'French' prostitute becomes a group scene of unspecified 'rich' men with a striptease dancer on the dinner table. These changes seem to have been done for the sake of easier mise-en-scene, but they don't improve the whole. It becomes more realistic and thus more questionable.
The Nazi occupation era is the center piece of the film in a much stronger way than I remember from the novel. The 'hero' Ditie is an opportunist with a bad conscience. He marries a German woman and thus takes advantage of privileges, but he is not comfortable with it. He also does nothing about it. His wife, who conveniently dies in a bomb attack, has stolen stamps from Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. Ditie sells them after the war and buys the hotel where he worked before ... but his joy is short lived, the communists take over, he is incarcerated and released as an old and more philosophical man. The girl from the chocolate factory is maybe his last dream before he settles for serving simple fare in a mountain village pub.
The movie relies on the background narrator, Ditie, more than is good for it. I wonder what I would think of it if I had not read the book. One of the movie's effects is that I like the book better. The movie tends to be all in all too mildly humorous.
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Becoming human ..
Added 4/29/2009
I had never heard of this film when I picked it up and didn't know what to expect. If I'd known that it was made by the same man who did "Closely Watched Trains" I would have been prepared for something wonderful. I think this film is equally as good, maybe even better than "Closely Watched Trains" and that's saying a lot.
On one level it's very funny in a European understated way (not a thigh slapper). The two actors who play the main character at different times in his life are both wonderful.
The story involves a "small man" from a "small village" whose name translates to "child." Like a lot of small men, he aspires to greatness and following his inclinations he manages to work himself up from selling hotdogs at the train station to a becoming a multi-millionaire owner of a deluxe hotel. This is all done agains the backdrop of the entrance of Hitler's forces into Czechoslovakia, the war, then the retreat of the Germans and the takeover of the Communists.
The historical events are shown but only as they affect the man's life. It's his story. (As one who hasn't lived through such times I can only wonder at the choices people had to make.) Our hero ignores the political scene and is focused only on "normal things": his success and the pleasure he has found with the ladies. Along the way he falls in love with a German girl and doesn't have any scruples about marrying her.
If this makes him sound unsympathetic, the writing and the brilliant actor who plays the young fellow endear him to the viewer. He's a regular person and does what most regular people do---stumbles along. His unconcious innocence is finally shattered when his wife loses her life by rushing into the burning hotel to rescue the valuable stamps she has taken from the homes of deported Jews. His pixie cutenss suddenly changes to the bearing of a mature man. There's a wonderful line that says something like "you become human when your life has become derailed."
The scenes of the mature man show how he has mellowed and reconciled himself to his past and to himself. There are a lot of repeated elements in the film--the use of mirrors, crashing dishes, throwing things in the air--that add to the richness of the story.
I wish I could give the film more than five stars and I hope that word spreads so that more people can enjoy it.
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A Delightful Fable
Added 4/16/2009
"I Served the King of England" is a real surprise. In Los Angeles theaters for half a second, I can't imagine this little Czech fable enjoyed a long theatrical run anywhere else. It's a shame. "King of England" is a delightful, fantastical little film directed by Jiri Menzel, the director behind "Closely Watched Trains", winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film in 1966.
The film opens with Jan Dite (Oldrich Kaiser) being released from prison and assigned to work in the forest, along with other cultural subversives. As he goes about refurbishing the run down cabin where he has been assigned to live, he remembers back to his early years, the years when all he wanted was to be a millionaire and own a posh, grand hotel. As we follow Jan (Ivan Barnev), he slowly works his way up from assistant waiter at a bar where intellectuals meet (and a prostitute entices him to her place of business introducing him to the pleasures of the flesh) to a fancy hotel in the country that caters to the whims of very rich men. He works his way up to the most grand and beautiful hotel in Prague. After he becomes the head waiter, World War II breaks out and Jan falls in love with a young German woman. Throughout these moments, the film follows Jan's rise from one job, each more important than the last, and also follows his sexual education from his initial meetings with a prostitute to his various affairs with different women.
I know, it sounds pretty pedestrian, like a million other films you have seen. Which is maybe the reason I didn't rush to the theaters to see it during it's theatrical release. But I was wrong. Very wrong. "I Served the King of England" is designed to look like a living fairy tale, even when World War II enters the film. Every scene has a slightly fantastical element or feel. But unlike "The Boy In The Striped Pajamas", the darker elements fit into this story smoothly, like the darker, scarier bits of a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. Jan literally floats his way through situations, always observing, trying to learn something that might help him later. Because he seldom speaks, Jan's antics could be modeled on Chaplin's.
When the Communists release him from prison, he moves to the country and meets another couple who are also outcasts and serving time in odd jobs. The couple, an older man and a younger woman (who Jan quickly determines was imprisoned because she is a nymphomaniac) are looking for trees to make into musical instruments. Jan and the couple become friends and Jan begins to lust after the younger woman. She realizes this and begins tormenting him, teasing him with flirtatious looks. But both are so good-natured about it, they both suspect nothing will ever happen and are just having fun with the process.
"I Served the King of England" is a rare find. Amusing, fun to watch, beautiful to look at, and fable like while maintaining a definite sense of a time and place. It is an enjoyable treat that deserves a bigger audience. Go rent it. Now.
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Beware the DVD translation
Added 3/23/2009
I have read the other reviews and am absolutely puzzled how they knew so much about this film, because the film's translation into English is the worst I have ever seen. They could not possibly have been based on the DVD.
It was impossible to watch the DVD: only a few words were translated for each scene thus leaving the viewer bewildered. The English is translated as though the translator only understood a few words, would put those down and them skip everything else that was said.
Other reviewers make this film sound interesting. Alas, I will never know because my version is useless.
3 out of 5 people found this helpful.
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Checks for the Czech
Added 3/11/2009
"I Served the King of England"
Big Checks for the Czech
Amos Lassen
Bittersweet and with great comedic drama, "I Served the King of England" is a wonderful little film that looks at the human spirit. It is the story of one man's life and his successes and failures and how he is not concerned with the events of the world. The lead role of Jan Dite is played by two actors---Ivan Barnev and Oldrich Kaiser--and it is an interesting and well acted role. For people like me who do not know the history of Czechoslovakia, the film also offers a bit of history.
The movie is based on an epic book and it looks at interesting concepts--penitentiaries, brothels, armies and the movie is something of a montage as Dite tells us about his life. In the film, Dite has just been released from Prague Correctional Facility after having been locked up for almost 15 years. Before his prison stay he had a job as a waiter and is just not at all interested in politics. He lives in turbulent times but he simply pays no attention to what is going on. His one aim is to become a millionaire. When a news flash comes in the radio about Hitler planning to liberate the Sudetenland, he changes the station to listen to music. He simply floats through the Nazi invasion of his country and somehow he manages to gain ownership of a hotel by selling valuable stamps that had been stolen from a Jewish family. Later when he sees a train carrying Jews to Auschwitz, he has a sense of compassion and runs after it to try to give those aboard sandwiches. After the war he is sent to jail when his hotel is nationalized and when he comes out 15 years later, he is older but none the wiser.
"I Served the King of England" is a wonderful look at a man's fate and how he grows up in the system, survives it and then falls victim to another system. Jiri Menzel who directed the wonderful "Closely Watched Trains" brings the character of Dite to life. He uses flashbacks and fast forwards so that we can follow Jan Dite. We see him as naïve and innocent even to the point of ignorance.
Because of its treatment of government, the film was banned for years because of its social and political criticism. Underpinning the film is the quest for money and money as a theme recurs throughout the film. It is a brilliant satire with wonderful cinematography of Prague. It is one of those rare movies that are pure pleasure to watch.
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