In the 1960s Jirí Menzel made a film which is regarded as one of Czechoslovakia's finest. In a poll ten years ago of a hundred Czech film professionals, his 1966 effort Closely Observed Trains (which I rented from lovefilm a year or two ago and enjoyed) was voted the 8th best Czech movie. So in seeing that his latest film was submitted by the Czech Rep.  to the oscars for the foreign language film category (and more importantly the very fact it was on at a cinema near me) I decided to check it out.

The story is basically that of an old man who gets out of prison after 15 years inside. We then see a bit of him resettling by the German border (doing up a dilapidated pub and befriending a man and a woman who are in the area) but the majority of the film is in flashback chronicling his rise as a waiter (and aspiration to be a millionaire) in pre-war Czechoslovakia.

The film is quite surreal. It is consistently funny, at times it's bordeline farce, the job of balancing the tone here is an extremely challenging one for Menzel and I think as a director for the most part he gets away with it. The acting is uniformly solid. All of it is played with straight faces, but Martin Huba as our character's superior does an especially fine job as the all knowing (he, after all, served the King of England ) and staunchly Czech maitre d'.

My problems with the film? For me it came off as quite sexist and borderline misogynist - every single female character in the film is a sex object and it becomes a little tiresome after the 3rd woman he's had sex with via his job. Also while I said the tone for the most part comes off, if there's anywhere it doesn't then that's in trying to throw in the very occasional reference to the Holocaust. Throughout it seems nothing more than the odd token gesture, but when you get into the level of character study at the end (hence, the point of the film) it's not as powerful as it could or should have been. That's probably because it's a comedy and it's very difficult to balance the two as a screenwriter. Thirdly there isn't much connection for me between the old man and the younger version of himself. Perhaps because he distances himself and says he doesn't recognise him, but if you're not going to show how he changed (being in prison) then you miss out on any catharsis at the end.

So, several opportunites missed but had they taken them it would have been a very different film. As it stands it is a consistently amusing, surreal film with several laugh out loud moments (and it must be said a few misguided ones too - cutting between him masturbating and showing the downfall of his fellow countrymen is just as weird and unnecessary as the sex scene was at the end of Munich) and the occasional touch of directorial brilliance (especially the opening silent scene). The balance of the film though both in terms of narrative and character isn't quite there (and I think that's more a screenplay than direction issue, but then again ... Menzel did both) and it personally left a slightly bad taste with the seemingly endless bevy of naked women, but it's trying to make a point as well as make you laugh as well. Got to admire the ambition at least.