Big deal?


every czech person i know (only about 6 to be fair) says this film is amazing... the favourite ever. i hear it was banned under communism but won an oscar after the wall fell etc etc.

i liked it but i really don't see the big deal. could anyone shed some light on this - why is it so popular in eastern europe? my personal theory is that there was little in the way of light subject matter in film allowed under the soviets, and so what is bascially a gentle comedy like this one would have been quite profoundly moving. just a thought.

any ideas?

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Well, being Czech myself (living Down Under now :o)...), I can honestly tell you, it would be very difficult for 'Non-Czechs' to understand. If only because everybody in the Czech Republic knows the work of Bohumil Hrabal, the writer behind this movie, and his style is, I think, very difficult to translate into English...Or maybe it is just because Czechs are quite melancholic, who knows ;o). By the way, Jiri Manzel has finished a new movie based on Hrabal's story, my favourite of his books - 'I Served the King of England', I am only hoping the movie will be at least half as good as the book! In Czech cinemas it is released on December 19.

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Well Im not Czech myself, but I found the film very enjoyable and much ahead of its time. I'd even go on to relate to the now popular comedy style of Wes Anderson, focusing on childhood and coming of age. Especially the film Rushmore, although I would say this film isnt sugar coated like that one is.

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Closely Watched Trains was actually released in 1966, two years before the Soviets took over and severely limited the Czech film industry - thus ending the brief run of incredible films known as the Czech New Wave (so it wasn't produced under Soviet rule)... it also won an Academy Award and numerous other international awards, so it wasn't just the Eastern Europeans who loved it...

as far as it being so popular because it was "light" compared to other films allowed under the Soviets, quite a bit of the czech new wave stuff was comedic or of "light subject matter" (i.e. Loves of a Blonde, Firemen's Ball, Initimate Lighting, Daisies, etc.), so I don't know that Closely Watched Trains was necessarily a vastly different kind of film than other Czech films at the time... that's not to say that it isn't a beautiful and amazing film that was far better than anything we (the USA) were producing at the time

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I'm Czech (sort of have lived a good bit of time there and know the language so on...), and I agree it is a very good movie, but not amazing. Part of it is people hype up things that they are aware of and others aren't. When my Czech friends came over to visit I hyped up the shows Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm and the movie Office Space, because they are not seen in Czech where as other favorites of mine such as Simpsons, Futurama, and Law & Order are (so why bother talking them up?). My friends typically enjoyed all of those, but didn't understand my enthusiastic build up, its very similar for Czechs (from a small country that only exports so much in creative property) to build up what we've done that others might not have heard of. If I hype up the Good Soldier Svejk to my friends in America by citing its influence on Catch 22 they are more likely to read it, and thus it raised awareness. That would be my explanation for the superlative many use for the movie as well.

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ASU55RR, you may be right about the hype, but I loved the movie so much I just bought it.


Are you going to pull those pistols or whistle "Dixie"?

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Yes, I somewhat enjoyed the film, and can compare it to a Wes Anderson film, but am also a bit baffled by all the hype. It was a decent film, gave it a "6" rating. Maybe I had a bad print, but many of the scenes were way too dark/unlit for me. Many times I couldn't see what was going on. I guess I would have to be from that country to "get it". But I did kind of enjoy it. Also, what was up with the Nazi kidnapping, when they took him onboard the train with them?

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Yeah, well...that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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I am not czech but from Latin America, yet I found this movie fascinating. There are better movies out there, of course, but not many.

Sometimes it's really hard to understand a movie that depicts a strange culture. I've had some problems trying to figure out some recent japanese and korean films but this wasn't the case. Aside from the "kidnaping of Milos" that remains obscure in its meaning, I didn't feel estranged by this film.

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I likewise found this film to be vastly over-rated. I have found several Czech films to be really great - but not this one. Two of the best are "The Shop on Main Street" from 1965 and "Zelary" from 2003. Also "Little Otik" (2001).

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I found it to be funny, but I think I might have liked it more if I knew the language. So much of humor comes not just from the words, but the tone the voice. I was imagining that many of the comments were spoken with an ironic or sarcastic tone of voice.

Also, understanding the culture and history would have helped at a few points. I didn't know enough about the Czech's relationship with Germany and Russia during WWII to understand all the nuances, and to understand the full import of what they did at the end.


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Czechoslovakia, at the time, was under the German occupation, Russia helped us, from one side, and Allies from the second side. That's all you might needed to know about this relationship, during the WW II.

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Well, European cinema is different from Hollywood. This movie, being Czech, is different in yet other ways, because it was made in the world behind the Iron Curtain. I saw this movie years ago and it still fills me with a nice warm feeling. This is a gentle, light-hearted commedy-drama, about first love, sex, youthful adventure - and death. A pretty romantic mix I would say. In the mid-1960, this must have been very heart warming to Czech audiences, given that people had just been through the awful Stalinist 1950s.

By the way, it won an Oscar in 1967, not when "the wall fell". It was not being shown in Czech theaters after 1968 because a few of the people in it had political blemishes on their CVs the Communist censors did not like.

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i liked it but i really don't see the big deal. could anyone shed some light on this - why is it so popular in eastern europe? my personal theory is that there was little in the way of light subject matter in film allowed under the soviets, and so what is basically a gentle comedy like this one would have been quite profoundly moving. just a thought.


Yes there are many nuances in the czech language that do not translate well into english. Then there is the whole cultural and historical aspect of the film that someone who is not Czech would not understand. I wouldn't expect a foreigner to understand "Animal House," or "Raising Arizona."

So to Czechs, it is a big deal.


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I just finished watching this movie and it's the first Czech movie I seen
even so I like eastern Europe movies .. but I didn't like this one
it's so overrated ..

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