Nearing the end of the Eastern European viewing challenge on ICM,I decided to dig into the small pile of titles from UK DVD company Second Run that I had picked up during the New Year sale. Recently viewing the very good I Served the King of England, (2006-also reviewed)I was happy to find another title by film maker Jiri Menze,which led to me having a right lark with this viewing.
View on the film:
Beginning production during the Prague Spring and Alexander Dubcek's "Socialism with a human face",only to end just after the Soviet invasion and a 20 year ban being slapped on the film. The earthy, surrealist humour underneath co-writer/directing auteur Jiri Menzel's regular collaborations with writer Bohumil Hrabal are pushed to the front here via a deliriously sarcastic streak of humour ruthlessly satirising Communism (Menzel afterwards got banned for 5 years from making films) via the scatter-shot mini-tales taking in the forced workers making vast quantities of poor quality steel which no one needs or wants, and the secret police taking people to work at the yard for the most absurd reasons.
Whilst being far more comedic than Closely Observed Trains (1966-also reviewed)the humanist outlook of Menzel and Hrabal is a major theme that they wonderfully continue to explore here,in the "bourgeois elements" being grounded down by guards for re-education/to become worker drones,holding onto what they hold dear, to the point of even defying the eyes of the guards with rebellious romance. Sticking posters on the walls ripping into the vapid slogans of totalitarian on "Comrades" working for the good of all, director Menzel reunites with cinematographer Jaromir Sofr and turn the scrap yard into a excellent, post-apocalypse wasteland,where tracking shots round the slabs of rusting metal make it appear all of humanity has been wiped out,only for Menzel to zoom in on the holes in the metal,to find larks on a string.
View on the film:
Beginning production during the Prague Spring and Alexander Dubcek's "Socialism with a human face",only to end just after the Soviet invasion and a 20 year ban being slapped on the film. The earthy, surrealist humour underneath co-writer/directing auteur Jiri Menzel's regular collaborations with writer Bohumil Hrabal are pushed to the front here via a deliriously sarcastic streak of humour ruthlessly satirising Communism (Menzel afterwards got banned for 5 years from making films) via the scatter-shot mini-tales taking in the forced workers making vast quantities of poor quality steel which no one needs or wants, and the secret police taking people to work at the yard for the most absurd reasons.
Whilst being far more comedic than Closely Observed Trains (1966-also reviewed)the humanist outlook of Menzel and Hrabal is a major theme that they wonderfully continue to explore here,in the "bourgeois elements" being grounded down by guards for re-education/to become worker drones,holding onto what they hold dear, to the point of even defying the eyes of the guards with rebellious romance. Sticking posters on the walls ripping into the vapid slogans of totalitarian on "Comrades" working for the good of all, director Menzel reunites with cinematographer Jaromir Sofr and turn the scrap yard into a excellent, post-apocalypse wasteland,where tracking shots round the slabs of rusting metal make it appear all of humanity has been wiped out,only for Menzel to zoom in on the holes in the metal,to find larks on a string.