Thursday, September 13, 2007
Film Closely watched film
Posted by J.R. Jones on Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 3:56 PM
Yesterday the Toronto film festival hosted a special presentation of Jiri Menzel's 1968 Czech feature Closely Watched Trains. We were lucky to see it on a big screen, because there's only one English-subtitled print in the world, and even more lucky to hear it introduced by British director Ken Loach, because there's only one of him in the world as well. They can always strike more prints.
As Loach explained, he's always been a fan of the politically oriented Czech films that predate the Prague Spring of 1968, particularly this one and Milos Forman's Loves of a Blonde (1966), but I was still fascinated that, of all the movies he might have chosen to introduce, he picked this buoyant, almost giddy comedy. Closely Watched Trains focuses on a virginal young man from a small Czech village who takes a job as a train dispatcher during the Nazi occupation. Despite the sabotage plot that takes shape as the story progresses, most of the screen time is devoted not to antifascist rhetoric but to the more pressing matter of getting laid. The young dispatcher is in love with a pretty conductor who passes through on occasion, and though she returns his attraction, he's terrified of how he'll perform with her. His mentor in this respect is the station master, who takes advantage of the sleepy depot's relative privacy to stage his romantic trysts.
Although the movie's bawdy humor seems well removed from the Loach movies I've seen, I can see why he admires it so much and the lessons he's taken away from it. The shocking act of violence that ends the movie is a boldly political statement, yet for most of the running time the movie's politics are admirably muted; Menzel spends most of his energy establishing and loving his characters, so the politics grow out of the action instead of being laid on with a trowel. "We're accustomed to films that tell us what to think," Loach said after the screening, but Closely Watched Trains is a movie of still, probing shots and long silences that "allow the film to breathe. . . . The quiet observation of this film is a lesson to all of us." in particular, he said, the economical photography was a conscious influence on his debut feature, Poor Cow (1967).
Eventually the discussion was opened to questions from the audience, and Loach took the opportunity to praise the Dardenne brothers, defend Michael Moore against "sniffy" UK critics, and acknowledge one questioner's disappointment that Neil Jordan had made a vigilante movie (though Loach noted that Jordan was a friend, and that he hadn't seen The Brave One). He also recalled with pleasure meeting Jiri Menzel in Venice, where they'd both been invited to accept "old man's awards." According to Loach, the third honoree, Al Pacino, was a no-show until the last minute, when he entered from the rear of the auditorium, marched up the aisle surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards, picked up his award, and split. "That's real film," Loach and Menzel agreed, "and we're just pissing around."
Comments (6)
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I'm disappointed that Menzel's latest, "I Served the King of England" (which, like "Closely Watched Trains," has as its source a novel by Bohumil Hrabal), hasn't at least turned up on the festival circuit in the U.S. Any ideas why this might be the case? At least Menzel's wonderful "Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin" received at least one or two festival screenings in North American in 1995 before the powers that be deemed it unreleasable to U.S. audiences.
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I've seen Closely Watched Trains a few years ago, but I can't remember it precisely enough to be sure of its similarities with recent Cannes award winner California Dreamin' (endless) by Romanian Cristian Nemescu. There seems to be more than a few coincidences, although arranged differently in the story. I find Menzel largely superior, of course. Just wondering about the possible inspiration. What do you think?
Facets' Film School recently screened a series of these films, the Czech New Wave. [url]http://www.facets.org/asticat?function=web&catname=facets&web=cinematheque&path=/filmschool/filmschoolarchives/springsession2007#02[/url]
"I Served the King of England" will be screened as part of the Chicago International Film Festival. I've just returned from the festival-launch party, which included a round-up video with a clip from the Menzel feature. It looked pretty funny, which may explain why it's unpalatable to U.S. audiences. Post-communist countries are supposed to be sad, you know.
That's good news about the Chicago Int'l Film Fest. Hopefully it will eventually find its way out here to the Left Coast as well.
I'd had the privilege of meeting Mr. Menzel and his lovely wife in this year's Jeonju festival; I think he's got a great sense of humor, and an unsentimental sense of proportion about things--something that I think shines through in Closely Watched Trains.
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