Closely Watched Trains adapted and directed by
Jiri Menzel
A different
version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVa4_CsRStSBBDo4uJWT8BSWtTTn0N1E
and
http://realini.blogspot.ro/
This is one
of the best films, included on the TIME list that you can find here:
It won the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture and it is a compelling tragicomedy about
a young man, Milos Hrma.
He is both naïve
and heroic, somewhat slow and brave, if not all at the same time, at least at
different stages of development.
Milos is a
virgin.
When he
tries to have sex, he is unable to perform and a doctor tells him about
premature ejaculation.
It is
normal, he is told and the advice is to get an older woman to help him…and an
extreme is reached when he tries to convince a woman who might be seventy years
old and does that while she is force feeding a goose…
The boy
descends from a family with an outré passé.
One ancestor
got stoned on a bridge in Prague, later argued with some miners who had lost
their jobs and got killed.
His grandfather
was a hypnotizer who came out as the only one trying to stop the Nazis from
occupying his country.
The man
stopped in front of the tanks, perhaps like the famous Chinese who stood in
front of a column in Tianmen Square during the students’ protests, and tried to
hypnotize the troops, only to be crushed by a tank.
Milos is
taken with Masa and there is an early memorable scene wherein he tries to kiss
her and the train departs.
World War II
takes place in the background, as Milos and his colleagues work at a railway
station and remind one of Chekhov
-
Unfinished Piece for Mechanical
Piano -for instance…
The behavior
of Milos Hrma recalls another character, that of Forrest Gump, with its
tendency to say and do wrong things.
The jokes
are sometimes simple and at others they are mixed with a dramatic sense and it
is difficult to know…is this a crying or a laughing moment?
An inspector
keeps coming to the station and he is grotesque and perhaps funny when he keeps
claiming that the glorious troupes are in a splendid position:
-
They are retreating…
-
Why? Keeps asking Milos Gump
-
It is a strategic retreat
-
Why?
-
Well, it is a trap and they will surround
and defeat the enemy…
Another time
they joke about the man stealing sausages and then cutting one in the tram and
saying he has another three…with one version suggesting he has cut his own
thing by mistake.
And speaking
of cutting, Milos himself thinks he can’t take it anymore, for life is too
difficult and needs to end it.
Fortunately
he fails and moves on, trying like a character from Monty Python to find a
woman to teach him about intimacy, about which he talks to a priest that has
another great and truthful line about the church;
-
The church has been doing psychoanalysis
for 600 years
And he is
right, for the confession is not much different from the act of the patient who
talks about his repressed desires to the analyst.
Sex is very
present in this film, albeit there is no nudity except for the buttocks of the
girl that works in the telegraph office of the railway station, who gets to
play an undressing game and gets stamps all over her body.
It is the
only instance that I know of wherein a public official’s stamp is used for
erotic purposes that become very funny as well.
Another case
of humor and official stamping was the hilarious comedy Top Secret, wherein the
authorities in communist East Germany made it easier to deal with the many
executions that were necessary and had a stamp:
-
Find him and kill him!
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