ThiefHott Too much of everything

Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Armand a travel with many dimensions. short history of Central Europe in XX century, charming trip across the life of a little man and his dreams, ironic, sarcastic, testimony and word of Ecclesiast, it is charming and seductive. and that is not a surprise. a great director and a nice novel are basis of expected success. but this success is, in fact, result of spices. melancholia, regrets, innocence as instrument to resist against gray world, humor as perfect option to describe a kind of Forrest Gump and his steps. for viewer from East Europe , it is a support for not forgive the past traces. for the others, it can be a comedy or a salt-sweet film. it is , like each film, only a window. and that is enough.

Mustang92 I recorded this off the Starz channel, knowing nothing about this movie. The title seemed interesting, and Starz listed it as a comedy/romance. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a drama, with NO humor. No laughs, no chuckles, smiled maybe once the entire movie.This is a drama, and a horrible one. Lame, lame story, with absolutely no point. Since this was based on a book, I have to assume the book has a point to it. This movie had none. Obviously, a director who doesn't know how to actually give a movie, a script, real direction.The main character is somewhat of a simpleton, although he's not made out to be stupid. Towards the end of the movie, when the Nazi occupation kicks in, he's oblivious to what's going on, but where the hell is the direction here? What, dear director, are you trying to say about this Czech man? What are you trying to say about the Czech country? That they are all oblivious people? Or were? You're supposed to be telling a story here, but you don't tell the story. What you tell is literally pointless.And then at the very end of the movie -- after plot holes in character motivations -- the main character convinces his Russian visitors he's a millionaire, ignoring that they just said all millionaires are going to jail. WHAT? WTF? So now, our main character does the dumbest thing in the entire movie. Yeah, that was motivated, alright!Then we get stupid voice over once he's in prison, to say he is where he always wanted to be. BS. What a horrible horrible movie. I should have quit after the first hour, realizing there was no way this could possibly improve. A foreign director with a penchant for indulgence with no point.Minor issue in this mess, but they start the movie with the main character getting out of prison, who looks to be 55 years old. But in flashback, before prison, he looks to be 28, 30. That's at least a 25 year visible difference, not 15. Brilliant casting, director & producers. RULE 1 in casting: Make it believable. You failed here. You failed entirely with this terrible movie, with no point to it. If the book was any good, you all adapted it horribly.Shame on Starz for listing this as a comedy. It should have been listed as sh*t.

rozklad We had to wait decades for Jiří Menzel's realisation of Hrabal's fantastic novel – one of my all-time favourite books. Menzel has lost none of his joy, sensuality and lust for life, and the result is a film brimming with invention.The book is the story of Jan Dítě, a smart but rather unsympathetic character whose "only aim in life is to be a millionaire", and his fortunes and misfortunes as Czechoslovakia passes from prosperous (or even, as here, sybaritic) republic, through Nazi occupation into Communism; a kind of Pilgrim's Progress through to a unique emancipation (which Menzel, a little confusingly, intercuts throughout).Indeed, Hrabal may have intended Dítě to be symbolic of his country as a whole: a small, new country (dítě=child), downtrodden but rather cocky to begin, rapidly gaining in wealth and stature until cruelly divided on Nazi occupation between active resistance and passive collaboration; ambitious immediately after the war until crushed again, this time almost willingly, by Communism, then finally achieving a kind of nemesis in spite of itself. This may unduly romanticise the Communist régime, but I find Hrabal is a little guilty of this, despite being ironically critical elsewhere; perhaps he had to be. (I am English so forgive me if I have got this all wrong). Even so, his book (like others before) was rejected by the authorities in 1975 and remained unpublished for many years. Even the title was ironic: Dítě, of course, serves the Emperor of Ethiopia, not the King of England, who had been served by the head waiter of the Hotel Paříž. As Dítě observes, this honour did him no good when he was taken away by the Nazis — just as Czechoslovakia was expediently shafted at Munich in 1938 by her English "allies".***Minor spoiler in next paragraph*** Menzel's portrayal of the young Dítě is a little Chaplinesque, perhaps to enable the viewer to identify more readily with a character who, in Hrabal's hands, is less ambiguous and sympathetic. He also possibly overplays the slapstick a little, though again this may be his way of presenting Hrabal's wonderful storytelling, the condensing of which into under 2 hours of film is a true feat. But the film is such a joy to watch, from the droll introduction (which, incidentally, does not come from the book, in which Dítě only gets 2 years in prison), through the horrors and ambiguities of war, to the paradisiacal ending, that all minor quibbles are forgiven.The two actors playing Dítě are superb, the set pieces perfectly choreographed, the sense of history in progress impeccable. And it's fun. Fans of the sublime "Closely Observed Trains" and "Postřižiny" (two earlier Hrabal/Menzel collaborations) will surely not be disappointed. Conversely, if you loved this film and desire more, I urge you to seek out these earlier masterpieces.Here is Menzel with a big budget, and he's wonderful. It's been worth the wait.

hackerpx-1 Menzel's film is a modern masterpiece. It tells the story of one man's fate, as seen through the mythical pen of Bohumil Hrabal, one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century. The film is interspersed with documentary footage of the occupation of the remnants of the Czech republic in 1939. It tells how one man grows up in one system, survives another, and willingly submits himself to a third (Communist). The slogan "my happiness was always in the fact that some unhappiness overtook me" belongs to the East European theater of the absurd. For those of you who have seen the amazing performance of Julia Jentsch in "Sophie Scholl - The Last Days" it will come as a surprise, if not a shock, to see Ms. Jentsch play a character exactly opposite to the one which brought her such fame -- a true blue Nazi! But that's what great actors are made of -- anti-Nazi heroine this year, Nazi lover of the main protagonist the next. She learned some Czech for this role, but when she speaks in German, the screen shows Czech subtitles. Some scenes are really priceless, as when Dite is escorted out of his hotel (presumably in 1948), by two members of the Communist people's militia who at first are inclined to allow him to stay on as administrator of his now nationalized enterprise, but when he keeps insisting he is a millionaire and needs to be arrested, they willingly oblige. Irony stays with us through the film, starting with the opening scene when the elder Dite is released from a Communist jail in Prague and he explains: "I was sentenced to 15 years (for being a millionaire), but because of the amnesty, I only had to sit for 14 and 3/4."