I Served the King of England

i_served_the_king_of_england

Time:
  • 5:30 p.m. and 8:15 p.m.
  • November 14, 2008

Where:
  • The Tower Theatre
  • 815 E. Olive Avenue

Synopsis

Jan Dítì (Ivan Barnev) is short in height, but high in ambition. To put it bluntly, the young provincial waiter wants to become a millionaire. And he knows just how to do it: by hearing everything, seeing everything, and creating opportunities at every turn. Armed with this knowledge and an irrepressible wish to please, he soon leaves his first place of employment, a pub, for a luxury brothel and, finally moving onto an elegant Art Nouveau Prague restaurant. But by the late 1930s, things are changing: Hitler has taken the Sudetenland region and is breaking apart Czechoslovakia. Jan falls in love with Líza (Julia Jentsch), a Sudeten German proud of her Aryan blood. They marry, and soon after Líza is sent to serve on the Polish front, while Jan remains behind to serve as a nurse in a Nazi SS Research Hospital, but when she returns, she has a fortune in rare stamps that Jews had ‘left behind’ … After Líza’s less than heroic death, Jan sells the stamps and becomes … a millionaire. But he only has three years to enjoy his fortune: the new Communist regime puts him behind bars for 15 years, one for each of his millions… Upon his release from jail, Jan is sent to live in a decrepit border town. Here Jan reflects on the events that have shaped his life – and to reflect on what might have happened if he had played a different role in these events.

Directed by Jiri Menzel
Czech Republic, 2006
120 minutes, R

Reviews

It’s a film filled with wicked satire and sex both joyful and pitiful.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
An elegant, ironic fable with literary origins (a novel by Bohumil Hrabal) that belongs to a distinctive middle-European artistic tradition with a puckish spirit that sometimes seems sweet and at other times ruthless.
Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com
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.
Stephen Holden, New York Times
It’s a film filled with wicked satire and sex both joyful and pitiful.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
An elegant, ironic fable with literary origins (a novel by Bohumil Hrabal) that belongs to a distinctive middle-European artistic tradition with a puckish spirit that sometimes seems sweet and at other times ruthless.
Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com
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.
Stephen Holden, New York Times

Every second Friday of the month Fresno Filmworks showcases first-run international and American independent feature films at The Tower Theatre.