Actors: Vaclav Neckar, Josef Somr
Director: Jiri Menzel
In most films, we are provided with a kind of logic for what our character is doing. We are therefore able to understand his motivations. Closely Watched Trains does nothing of the sort. Our main character is a blank slate from whose whims we are removed. At the outset, we are told that our protagonist comes from a long line of do-nothings and seeks to follow in their footsteps - one of those hilariously sad Eastern European existences that Gogol and Dostoyevsky captured perfectly. Instead of 'doing nothing', our protagonist does quite a bit, but I at least had no real idea why.
The other characters, on the other hand, are perfectly drawn - the officious Nazi, the pompous station master, the lecherous train dispatcher Hubicka, and his shameless consort Zdena - it is almost as though our protagonist doesn't even inhabit the same world with these people, so withdrawn and odd he turns out to be. In all, though, Closely Watched Trains is a film I enjoyed but that I certainly didn't 'get'.
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looks like you weren't watching closely enough
ReplyDeletetry reading the book, by bohumil hrabel. i really enjoyed it, and, though i think some of your questions regarding the main character will still remain, it sounds like he's bit less of a cipher in the book.
ReplyDeletealso, it's real short: you can read it in the same time you took watching it.