Political implications?


The back of my Criterion DVD says that this film is "a provocative political satire" that is "presumed to be a commentary on the floundering Czech leadership", noting also that it was "'banned forever' in Czechoslovakia following the Russian invasion".

As I know next to nothing about Czech political history, I could almost feel most of the film whizzing over my head as I watched it. Could somebody give me a hand and explain the political significance of this film? How is it a satire?

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

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One doesn't really need to know much about Soviet Eastern Europe and stupid bureaucracy to get all the hilarious points this film is making. The people are even robbing from themselves in the film! (the prize table)

And how about that moment with the house burning, and the poor old guy in the pj's who lived there is freezing out in the snow, so the firemen move him closer to the flames eating up his house etc.

It's packed with jokes that also serve as biting remarks on the helpless hypocritical regime it was made under.

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The entire room was a microcosm of Czech society at the time. The Firemen's Brigade is clearly the Party Leadership, obsessed with events and spectacle, which they can't even pull off correctly, while ignoring the real threat, and not doing their JOB when the crisis arrives. Forman wasn't prophesying, but remember that the Soviet tanks were not too far away, when the film was made.

Then, of course, the "treasury" being stolen under the guards' eyes. The young people not taking any of it too seriously. And everything else.

Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.

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Yeah, it's pretty much soviet system in the nutshell. They want to have a beauty contest, but can't organize it and can't attract any participants. So they had to use force when all the girls ran out. The one girl who goes there willingly is the one who's dad used his connections to sign her.

The only difference between the real USSR and Czech's soviet state circa 1967 is that in Russia the firemen would have successfully used force and terror to make sure everything's in order.

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