chaos-rampant 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.

morganl-6 this is a farce in part, but i do wonder why there's the great American need to qualify this movie. so one will know the correct response, perhaps? aw, just sit back and be enlightened. if more folks had laughed at the Nazis they wouldn't have made it into power. and as for the woman being portrayed as lesser than the man, this is called history, folks. the movie is charming. barney is a mime's delight. and the sex is delicious, and certainly not raunchy as one reviewer on the DVD writes. i always find it stimulating to have to curb my love of MTV editing and car chases and to let the different pace of the European style wash over me. ah tempora, ah mores.

Jay Harris The time period of this film is from 1938 to about 20 or so years later.In fact 2 actors play the lead''Jan.Ivan Barnev is Jan as a young man,Uhlrich Kaiser as the older Jan Both are excellent. In fact all the acting is excellent.Juri Menzol directed & wrote the screenplay taken from a novel by Bohumil HrabaiIt is extremely well made & directed.Then why have I given this only a 7 rating?I could not tell what type of film this was, The time period is from when Hitler invaded Czechlosvakia in 1938 & ends about 19 years later. There were very dramatic earth shaking times,.The entire film is made in a light vein almost comedic.I knew what was happening, I did not find in amusing/I may have missed something,BUT what was it.I did like what I saw, I just do not know what I saw,.Someone please tell me if this was a satire or a comic look at a tragic time.Ratings ***(out of 4) 83 points (out of 100) IMDb 7 (out of 20)

philipdavies Menzel, faithful to Hrabal, shows the Fall of Czech Man - and Sudeten German Woman - and their expulsion from their respective Middle-European idylls: They tragically fall into each other's arms just as global issue is joined that soon disillusions our Romeo and destroys his (now unfortunately rampantly Nazi) Juliet.Neither the quiet life of getting rich and enjoying all the pleasures money can bring, nor the stirring Wagnerian strains of Germanic supremacist idealism, can survive, but our opportunistic anti-hero, Ditie (a name which can translate as 'little man') is more adaptable, because his ideals are more pliant to the accidents of fate than his German wife's rigid Hitlerite fanaticism, and consequently he is eventually able to emerge from a sort of Communist Purgatory with a keen appreciation of life's real and much simpler necessities.With profound irony, it is in a smashed and ethnically cleansed Sudeten German village that an older and a wiser Ditie's rehabilitation is completed. And it is from this sobering perspective that he can finally both regret the excesses and errors of his life, and yet also take nostalgic pleasure from what was, after all, the wonderful, glittering, profoundly human spectacle of folly and grandeur which his life has been! Far from tragic or depressing, therefore, this film of the 20th century debacle of a nation ruined remarkably concludes with a very Czech endorsement of the simple, inoffensive pleasure in life which will always console this patient people at the troubled heart of darkest Europe: Ditie allows himself to enjoy a tankard of Pilsener beer - and Menzel's camera seems to gild the moment with as much gloriously sensuous golden dreaminess and spiritual fulfillment as ever bloated millionaire or romantically excessive idealist knew.At last, the little man has found his fulfillment where it always lay: in the little things. At last, old, disillusioned and unseduced any longer by the world's headier attractions, Ditie finds himself at home and happy.Here, the film seems to be saying, is the real idyll to which the Czech person should retire for refreshment of the soul, and not those false - though fabulous - ones we have been forced to discard.Just as Ditie observes that his own career of accidents always turned out well, so in this perspective the Czech experience seems, on the whole, to have turned out for the best. This optimistic fatalism seems typical of the Czech way of seeing things, and is as characteristic of this film of Menzel's old age as it was of his early masterpiece, 'Closely observed trains.' On this view, it would be churlish to condemn the film for self-indulgence, as many Western critics have done. Frankly, they haven't suffered so much, so what do they know of ethical conundrums and the moral paradoxes of survival? This meditation on the more inglorious struggles of the insignificant and friendless to survive deserves our respect, not an easy and priggish contempt. This must especially be true in the country which lies behind the heavily loaded title 'I served the King of England,' for this heavy hint must surely prick that particular national conscience with its role in one of history's most blatant acts of betrayal. The title practically dares any English commentator to judge Ditie in his historical predicament!(There is also considerable satisfaction to be had by the viewer from the sheer technical finesse of the film's production, on every level. Jiri Menzel's craft is also hugely impressive in scene after scene, which are turned with complete mastery of tragi-comic effect. But this is a study for another occasion.)