‘In slujba regelui Angliei’, acesta este filmul cu care inaugurez capitolul despre Filme din jurnalul meu on line. Jirí Menzel, regizorul cu nume ciudat care s-a indeletnicit cu aceasta frumoasa poveste, alege o nota usor ironica de a relata la persoana I, parcursul abracadabrant al devenirii personajului principal Jan Díte. Acest tinar ajunge, aparent fara mari eforturi si chiar usor nefiresc sa detina o avere fabuloasa, traversand perioade de criza financiara mondiala, Marele Razboi si chiar detentia.
Ce-l recomanda ca un film ce trebuie vazut chiar si de oamenii de cifre/bani, sunt fetisurile uluitoare cu covorul de bani pe care si-l ‘tesea’ cu minutie si nesfarsita placere seara inainte de intalnirile amoroase cu rapitor de frumoasele cuceriri feminine, sau felul in care ‘semana’ maruntisul zornaitor in jurul meselor celor bogati tocmai pentru a-i ironiza si chiar umili.
A AVEA este o nevoie pur umana, de negasit la pesti sau copaci. Totusi, noi oamenii avem aceasta sete nebuna si insatiabila. Expresia ‘when there is blood on the streets, buy properties’ nu poate fi mai putin potrivita si actuala decat aici, in filmul acesta atat de zbuciumat dar si bine temperat de aparitia in paralel a batranului Jan Díte, mult mai impacat cu sine si cu lumea decat imaginea sa din tinerete. Si mult mai AVUT in opinia mea.
Poti cumpara acest film de pe la Carturesti sper, sau sa incerci sa-l descarci de pe un torrent. Astept parerea ta si chiar sugestii despre filmele care te-au captivat, transformat, imbogatit.
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Oricât nu-mi plac mie oportuniştii, Jan Dite mi s-a părut irezistibil. 🙂 Dacă nu l-ai văzut încă, să cauţi şi “Closely Watched Trains”. Tot al lui Menzel, din ’66.
OanaMarrrria, vizita ta pe blog m-a uns pe suflet cu ulei de Malta. Am incercat sa vad si filmul acesta, care suna interesant tare dupa titlu. Mi s-a arut mai greu digerabil. Te rog totusi sa mai vii pe blog si sa imi recomanzi mereu si alte filme.
Bineînţeles că “I served the king of England” e mai digerabil, e făcut oarecum în stil hollywoodian. 🙂 “Closely watched trains” e mai greu, dar mai subtil şi mai profund. A luat un Oscar, pe vremea când premiile astea se dădeau la filme mai puţin comerciale. 🙂
Apreciez dojana calda si subtila. As vrea sa te surprind si eu cu viitoare titluri de filme. Repet: sunt flatat de vizita ta pe blog. Si mai ales de faptul ca-mi lasi si comentarii. Sper sa nu plecati chiar de tot din tara si sa ne revedem. Mai tii minte petrecerea din Iasi? Am in agenda un duet intre tine si Botezatu de un mare rafinament. Pot sa-l public?
recomand ‘Inception’ pt ca cred ca poti sa ‘citesti printre linii’ hollywood-iene. 😉
Pregatesc si filme de la Hollywood. Sigur!
a si bine-nteles filmele lui pazzolini si tarkovski.
Ceva recomandari? Titluri concrete? Imi place ca apreciezi filmele. As fi foarte curios daca ai si specifica ce anume ti-a placut. 2-3 fraze.
Te mai astept!
:)) Sigur că poţi, dar sunt convinsă că o să scandalizezi nişte cititori de-ai tăi cu ocazia asta.
Şi eu sper să ne revedem, e exclus să plecăm fără să ne vedem cu toată lumea înainte. 😉
Filmele/documentarele mele preferate (neierarhizate):
1.) Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, cea mai buna comedie politica conceputa vreodata, regizor: Stanley Kubrick)
2.) Amores Perros (Love’s a Bitch, 2000, Alejandro González Iñárritu, drama)
3.) Y Tu Mama También (And your mother too, 2001, Alfonso Cuarón, comedie)
4.) The Piano (1993, Jane Campion, drama)
5.) Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuarón, drama/sci-fi)
6.) Hable con Ella (Talk to Her, 2002, Pedro Almodóvar, comedie/drama) – majoritatea filmelor lui Almodóvar sunt faine!
7.) El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006, Guillermo del Toro, fantasy)
8.) Amélie (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, comedie)
9.) Spirited Away (2001, japonez, Hayao Miyazaki, animatie/Bildungsroman)
10.) O’Horten (2007, norvegian, Bent Hamer, comedie/drama)
11.) 12 (2007, rusesc, Nikita Mikhalkov, drama)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0488478/
12.) Oldboy (2003, korean, Chan-wook Park, drama/thriller)
13.) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry, drama/romantic/sci-fi)
14.) Triplets of Belleville (2003, Sylvain Chomet, animatie/aventura/comedie)
15.) Platoon (1986, Oliver Stone, drama/razboi/actiune)
16.) Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman, drama/fantezie)
17.) One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, Milos Forman, drama)
18.) No Man’s Land (2001, francez, Danis Tanovic, comedie/drama/razboi)
19.) 21 Grams (2003, Alejandro González Iñárritu, drama/thriller)
20.) The Thief (1997, rusesc, Pavel Chukhraj, drama)
21.) Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola, drama/razboi)
22.) La vita è bella (1997, Roberto Benigni, drama)
Documentare:
1. Etre et Avoir (2002, Nicholas Philibert, documentar/comedie)
2. The Future of Food (2004, documentar despre inceputurile ingineriei genetice, studiul medical si legislatia necorespunzatoare a efectelor acestui nou tip de mincare asupra sanatatii)
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9Y_QH_c70s
prima parte (1/8): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpmVE_E0zdM
3. The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004, creat pentru BBC, Adam Curtis, documentar: politica terorii)
prima parte (1/3): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGo1DqmfHjY
4. The Century of the Self (2002, pentru BBC, Adam Curtis, documentar: how to use Marketing and Public Relations to rule the world 🙂
prima parte (1/4): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcYBSXgtmKQ
5. The Corporation (2003, Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, documentar: Legislatia americana a secolului 18 considera o corporatie a fi egala cu o persoana/individ. Care sunt repercusiunile acestei viziuni in ziua de azi)
prima parte (1/23): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y
Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále (I Served the King of England)
OK, m-am executat la sugestia de a nu-mi “pierde weekendul de pomana”: am vazut “I Served the King of England” si mi s-a parut amuzant si deasemeni, cum se zice pe aici, “a piece of eye candy”. … si vorbind despre bombonele – un pic copilaros, ceea ce a fost probabil intentia lui Menzel totusi: numele protagonistului principal “Dite” inseamna “copil”.
Asa cum exista filme cu mare priza la publicul feminin care se numesc “chick flicks”, filmul acesta pare a avea un succes nebun la gagii, drept pentru care l-am denumit “guy flick”. Vorbind in continuare despre eye candy, cinematografia, make-up, costume, production design si coloana sonora mi s-au parut excelente. Cu alte cuvinte, forma e grozava, continutul – mai putin. Ce m-a dezamagit, printre altele, a fost faptul ca nu exista personaje/aparitii feminine care sa nu fie prostituate, fanatice Hitler sau organe reproducatoare ambulante. “Rapitoare”, ce-i drept, dar care nu spun nimic care sa le diferentieze de un obiect/organ. Inteleg necesitatea de a scrie un Bildungs-/Erziehungsroman despre visele si aspiratiile unui barbat in exclusivitate (scenariul a fost scris de Menzel dupa nuvela lui Hrabal); istoria literara si cinematografica e deja plina cu virf si-ndesat de povesti despre devenirea si formarea spirituala feminina: ce-i prea mult strica…
Ascultind fantastica naratiune, ai impresia ca asculti un batrinel amuzant, inzestrat din plin cu darul povestirii, care iti dezvaluie – fara sa te avertizeze din timp – cele mai intime fantezii sexuale si visuri de putere si avutie. Din nou, povestea curge cu maiestrie, dar in timp, descoperi ca fluviul maret contine niste aluviuni suspecte si insalubre.
Apreciez faptul ca Jan Dite se vrea un personaj satiric, fara excese de demnitate, sau de caracter, a carui functie e suprevietuirea in orice circumstante si in pofida suferintei oricui altcuiva si mai apreciez faptul ca se vrea un personaj infantil si amoral dar pretentia de inocenta nu reuseste sa-mi inlature senzatia distincta de voyeurism. ‘Oh, well, there’s always Slivovice’ …
Cu toate acestea, mi s-a parut un film superior multor comedii hollywoodiene. Criticile par a fi fost, la vremea lor, impartite. Citez aici citeva dintre ele:
Din Chicago.Metromix.com – Michael Philllips:
“Stupid as it is to generalize about regional humor, here goes: The mordant wit and paradoxical melancholic bounce you find in a great many Eastern European filmmakers informs every joke and rosy sexual encounter in the work of Czech writer-director Jiri Menzel.
Menzel’s sensibility, however, always was broader and softer than that of many of his contemporaries. Compared with the glories coming out of Romania in recent years, typified by “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” Menzel’s latest, “I Served the King of England,” is pudding—tasty enough but inoffensive even when it should offend, provoke, startle. Many of my American colleagues have fallen hard for the latest by Menzel, the director of “Closely Watched Trains” and “My Sweet Little Village.” You may fall for it too. It strikes me as an assured and very attractive piece, but with a hollow ring—disappointing, especially considering the quality of the sight gag that opens the picture. (It involves a prison gate.)
(…) If more of “I Served the King of England” boasted that sort of comic nerve, Menzel might have had a classic on his hands. Instead, the film is likable and, in its tone, strictly middle-of-the-road. In one passage Dite goes to work for an Aryan breeding institute set up by Himmler; the scene is weirdly toothless, just when the irony should be at its most savage.
GoMemphis.com – John Beifuss: “I Served the King of England” has a distinctly Eastern European sensibility, born from centuries of political upheaval, war and — on the plus side — good beer. The movie is both respectful and irreverent toward learning and art; it celebrates the pleasures of life while acknowledging its absurdity. Its attitude might be described as good-natured fatalism.”
Guardian.co.uk – Peter Bradshaw: “soft-porn picaresque”
The Observer – Philip French: “Its naive antihero is a hotel worker reviewing his life: prospering under prewar capitalism, surviving during the Nazi occupation, being sent to jail by the postwar communist regime and finding an odd happiness in provincial exile following his release. Bureaucracy, snobbery, avarice and self-seeking flourish in each era. There are nods towards Kafka and The Good Soldier Svejk and a good deal of gross Central European humor.”
Guardian.co.uk – Kate Connolly: “The spat reached its peak at the 1998 Karlovy Vary film festival in Bohemia when Menzel approached Sirotek and repeatedly whacked him with a cane before the packed Grand Auditorium of the Thermal Hotel. Menzel was cheered and later said he had resorted to caning the producer to deal with his “unethical behaviour” and to preserve the reputation of Bohumil Hrabal. Sirotek bowed out of the project and Menzel went on to make the £2m German-Czech co-production. The results were seen by a somewhat disappointed group of critics at the Berlinale this morning. The film has been attracting large audiences across the Czech Republic, but even there critics have admitted to its long-winded and sugary nature.
Sad proof that sometimes you can be at work on something for too long – although Hrabal would no doubt have been amused to learn that the film’s production history provided more compelling entertainment than the movie itself.”
FilmJournal.com: “For the more serious among spectators, it is also a triumphant display and reminder of those qualities that serve as bedrock of the medium. Besides the voiceover narration and flashback structure that fortify narrative, there’s delicious visual spectacle, clever editing linking contiguous scenes from different eras, sound design that deepens engagement, and an elegantly arching story.”
AustinChronicle.com – Josh Rosenblatt: “Jan Díte is a curious film creation: equal parts Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harpo Marx but with a self-absorbed indifference to the suffering of others to which none of those old-time comics (save maybe Harpo on one or two maniacal occasions) would ever dream of aspiring. The hero of I Served the King of England (played as a young man by Barnev), the newest film from Czech New Wave hero Menzel (Closely Watched Trains), has only three hopes: to be rich, own his own hotel, and bed as many women as possible. Nothing else concerns him. And whatever he has to do to realize those hopes is fully justified in his mind. Never mind that the riches he accumulates are stolen from the homes of Jews sent off to Nazi concentration camps; never mind that the hotel he works for and one day hopes to buy is being used as a breeding camp for Aryan supermen and -women; never mind that one of the many women he loves has to stare at a portrait of Adolf Hitler to get aroused for lovemaking: Díte lives to satisfy his desires, history and morality be damned…. for all its fairy-tale whimsicality and Amélie-like charm, struck me as a remarkably cynical, misguided, and, ultimately, confusing look into the world of the European aristocracy in the first half of the 20th century.”
RogerEbert.Suntimes.com – Roger Ebert: “We will not soon see a comedy like this made in the United States. Even if it were entirely translated into American characters and terms, audiences would wonder what it was about. We have lost the delight in the irony that Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken practiced. The movie must come to us bearing the answers to its questions.”
Deseret News – Jeff Vice: “… this imported satire keeps trying to turn Bulgarian actor Ivan Barnev into an Eastern European version of Charlie Chaplin. Showing Barnev’s character as a clownish waiter on roller skates? Please, we’ve seen Chaplin’s 1916 short “The Rink,” and there’s no way any film is going to live up to it.”
JSonline, Milwaukee – Graham Killeen: “A toffee-hued film with computer-generated flourishes, “I Served the King of England” might not suit Charlie Chaplin, were he alive today. But Chaplin’s visual gusto complements this precisely timed and profoundly reverent ode to silent cinema. “I Served the King of England” manages to conjure all the magic of the silent-film era, when mesmerized audiences thought movies were a gateway to another world, or a cozy fire on a cold night. Timeless and charming, this is one for the ages.”
Time.com – Richard Schickel: “Throughout these low-key adventures, Jan maintains his air of wide-eyed innocence. Stuff is always happening to him, and he reacts to circumstances but never acts upon them. When, for example, the maitre d’ in that Prague restaurant makes a bold subversive gesture to the occupying Nazis, Jan is sympathetic. But he does not take a stand with the man who has been his friend and mentor. He is, in effect, the heir to “The Good Soldier Schweik,” anti-hero of the classic novel by Jaroslav Hasek, which is the Czech anti-epic.
ChicagoReader.com – J.R. Jones: “Forty years have passed since Czech director Jiri Menzel won an Oscar for Closely Watched Trains, yet the basic formula for this 2006 feature (based, like the other film, on a novel by Bohumil Hrabal) seems nearly identical: a virginal young man, an assortment of hotties, plenty of slapstick, and the Third Reich. The story covers many years in the life of a devoted hotel waiter (Ivan Barnev) as he learns the profession from his dignified elders and gets his sexual initiation from the beautiful prostitutes who service the hotel’s fat old industrialists. The tone darkens somewhat when the Nazis overrun the Czech lands and the waiter, infatuated with a newly arrived fraulein, gradually betrays his friends and coworkers. The deft physical comedy is a pleasure, though the leering chauvinism becomes more embarrassing as the movie progresses. Mel Brooks never had it this good.”
NewYorktimes.com – Stephen Holden: “This chipper protagonist (…) is a Chaplinesque symbol of a nation made cynical after being taken over first by Nazis and then by Communists within the span of a decade. Growing up in a place that exchanged one totalitarian nightmare for another, who wouldn’t be cynical? (…) There is hardly a moment in this new film in which you are not aware that its absurdist view of the human condition was shaped by traumatic 20th-century events. (…) So busy looking out for himself that he fails to anticipate what should be obvious, Jan embodies the central European Everyman as an archetypal naïf protected by his own innocence, until reality arrives.”
The Washington Post – Ann Hornaday: “I Served the King of England” is a movie besotted with its own contradictions. An extravagant, visually stunning feast of sensory delights, Jiri Menzel’s winsome comedy, set in World War II-era Prague, pirouettes along a beguiling but treacherous line between horror and whimsy. (…) As arresting as such images are, “I Served the King of England” revolves around a maddeningly cipher-like protagonist. For a young man on the make (played with subtle Chaplinesque physical prowess by Barnev), Jan remains strangely passive, even inert, as he learns the rules of the game. His ethereal air of disconnection from the grubby realities of life begins to feel like something far more sinister as history raises the stakes. By one of the film’s final scenes, when the older Jan sits alone in an abandoned pub surrounded by mirrors, it’s clear that reflection, if not moral reckoning, is at hand. When it finally arrives, the note it sounds of healing and forgiveness is no doubt welcome, but viewers could be forgiven for wondering if it’s entirely earned.”
Popmatters.com – Cynthia Fuchs: “(…) Using the absurd Díte to indict decades of Czech ambition, passivity, and willful ignorance, the film is a familiar sort of comedy, equal parts farcical and musical, its very sameness making it seem inconsequential. Damning capitalism, fascism, and communism, it argues that all are driven by greed and small thinking. Díte claims to understand what motivates people. “For a few coins,” he says “they’ll bend over kneel down and even crawl on all fours.” (…) As many times as he tosses coins, well-heeled citizens scramble to retrieve them., even as he gazes into the sky and pictures animated bills cascading back to him. (…) When at last he and Líza are reunited, she’s brought with her stamps worth millions and once owned by Jews, now “deported.” Díte wonders for a moment, then assumes he deserves the profits, having worked so assiduously during his lifetime. Such inversions of logic, morality, and responsibility shape the world views of most everyone Díte meets during his bizarre romp of a lifetime. Attached to no one and floating through history, he’s not so much an everyman as a hapless one, buffeted by forces he can’t begin to comprehend.”
LetsNotListen.com – Tricia Olszewski: “Some of it is charming; some of it is tedious—and by the time the film’s main themes veer from money and girls to war and eugenics, you’ll be quite ready for this two-hour Life Is Beautiful echo to end. (…) More important, though, Díte becomes acquainted with Marcela (Zuzana Fialová), a virtual forest sprite who seems to exist only to giggle, give sultry stares, and let Díte ogle her, all of which sparks memories of the now-creepy Czech’s enchanted youth. (…) The running coin-tossing joke is amusing but ultimately superficial—as is the film overall. Greed is an obvious theme, both in the excesses that Díte witnesses as well as in his own ambitions. And though his dubious meal ticket after the rise of Nazism leads him to his first love, a Hitler-worshiping teacher named Liza (Julia Jentsch), Díte’s attraction to her is both unbelievable and an awkwardly handled tonal shift.
The elder Díte reminisces to try to make sense of his life, at one point literally sitting in front of several mirrors to watch his reflection. The shot is artful—Menzel’s visual style, often employing lovely, lyrical surrealism, is the film’s most consistent strength—but empty. Díte never really finds any meaning or lessons in the choices he made, and neither will the audience. Slower than a glacier, forty-five minutes into this thing, I said it was shaping up to be one of the least entertaining movies I’ve ever seen. Over an hour later, despite prolific female nudity, when it finally ended I realized that that assessment had grossly over-rated it. Reinforcing my opinion, one of my companions at the film asked his wife, “Is this ever going to end?”
Slant Magazine – Bill Weber: “A pliant worm whose only commitment is to become a major hotelier, Díte’s limited awakening is neither tragedy nor the kind of bitter, fatalistic farce seen in Lina Wertmuller’s Seven Beauties. “Who knows where they are now?” his Nazi spouse sniffs of the deported Jews whose rare stamps she’s stolen to fund Díte’s dream. A weak and dopey bystander, though representative of millions in that mid-century cataclysm, isn’t a compelling enough fulcrum to bear the satiric weight of Hrabal’s timeline.”
CombustibleCelluloid.com – Jeffrey M. Anderson: “Lubitsch himself managed to make a snappy Hitler-era comedy with To Be or Not to Be (1942), but Menzel can’t come even close to duplicating that feat, or to recapturing his previous magic. (It’s closer to Benigni than to Lubitsch.)”
Flaaaaavia,
Ai scris oleaca! Imi vor trebui cateva seri bune sa parcurg toate trimiterile, notele si productiile din comentariul tau. O sa revin in jurnal (sper) cu noi filme chiar din lista ta, pentru ca o parte le-am vazut si eu si sper sa le placa si cei care vor intra pe blog. Stilul tau mi-aminteste de discutiile-prea scurte si prea putine- pe care le am cu Grigore cand merg la Iasi: totul are legatura cu un scriitor, o piesa mai veche a nu stiu cui si tot asa.
Multumesc pentru vizita si pentru profunda analiza. te mai astept si sper sa te surprind sau macar sa te fac sa zambesti.
Cu bine!