Cover of I Served the King of England

Czech filmmaker Jiri Menzel adapted, in 2008, yet another novel by Bohumil Hrabal–this time, I Served the King of England (with English subtitles).  Though I haven’t read the book, I find it impossible to doubt that it’s a very good film version, one for which a talented man is responsible.  Dark satire is here but no contempt for the characters, and a fun-loving style springs up, even to the point of exhibiting a peculiar, silent-movie mode for an early sequence.

Menzel’s hero, Jan Diti, initially sells hot dogs in Prague but aspires to become a millionaire; and moreover, working as a waiter for years, he does everything right.  Nothing is too challenging for him; he even brings ecstasy to the prostitute he beds.  But things go wrong, patently, after Jan meets Liza, a Hitler-loving German girl, with the hideous merger of Nazi-blessed religion and clinical science taking place.  And things go wrong after Jan finally makes his millions and Communists enter the picture.

Ah, well.  As a misanthropic, 60-year-old Czech professor tells Jan, “Man is the progeny of Evil [by “Evil” he does not mean God]–criminal and stupid.”  Indeed, the situation is “worse than that,” he says, because–and this is interesting–“all philosophers and prophets exclude Jesus Christ.”   Assuredly the film is about the (often efficient) enemies of civilization.

Plenty of artistic prowess is here.  In one scene, rich old men, while dining, gaze at a half-naked girl lying on a revolving platform.  Afterwards she quietly strips for head waiter Jan so the two plebs can have their own funtime.  Another bit of footage offers a shot of Jan and Liza sleeping in bed after lovemaking–the Czech fellow fully surrenders to the German woman–before the soundtrack produces a solemn radio announcement about Czechoslovakia’s late-Thirties surrender to Hitler.  And then there’s Menzel’s success at getting expert comic performances from his actors.  Ivan Barnev is buoyant and unself-conscious as a young Jan, Oldrich Kaiser is convincingly subdued as an aging Jan.  Julia Jentsch, as Liza, is a perfect political fanatic, listening without conscience to prophets who exclude Jesus Christ.

It will probably be a long time before I see another tragicomedy as palatable as the absorbing I Served the King of England. 

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Released recently (March 2011), Battle: Los Angeles is a fairly decent war movie, or war actioner (whatever it is), wherein a platoon of brave Marines take on murderous extraterrestrial beings that are unexpectedly invading various countries.  Aaron Eckhart never makes a false move in his role as a military man, viz. Sgt. Nantz, and the movie’s special effects are, I think, just what they should be.  Battle has been criticized for its shaky-cam, but shaky-cam or not the action footage seldom disappoints.  One potent scene, for example, has Nantz rush out to put several children on an ascending helicopter, only to witness the helicopter get horrifically blasted by the space aliens before it can re-land for the children. 

One might object that the characters are made of cardboard, but there is no real place for individual human complexity in battlefield sequences. 

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman, Battle: Los Angeles is not a great entertainment, but there is fun to be had.  It is hardly free of banality, but it means business.  Too, it sincerely honors the Marine Corps.

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I don’t find Noel Coward’s comic play, Hay Fever–performed in Tulsa in 2011–very funny, but I do enjoy and respect it.  It’s rollicky, inventive and properly, indeed brilliantly, structured.  It would be nice if there were at least one really honorable character in it, but the barbed satire can be appreciated.  Among these well-to-do English people of the 1920s, there is false emotion, narcissism, and caddishness.

Good show.  Kudos to costume designer Claremarie Verheyen.

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The Davis Guggenheim film, Waiting for “Superman” (2010-now on DVD), is a good if imperfect documentary about public schools in the U.S.  Guggenheim is a liberal who is rightly critical of teachers’ unions.

The Village Voice‘s Melissa Anderson, who didn’t like the film, mentions in her review that the doc-maker asks the question, “What is our responsibility to other people’s children?”  She answers the question thus:  “Maybe, for starters, demanding a stronger, securer social safety net”–and she knocks Guggenheim for failing to bring this up.  But how, exactly, do we obtain this stronger safety net, Ms. Anderson?  By increasing spending for unemployment benefits, Medicaid, CHIP, the food-stamp program, and Social Security?  Sorry, that just adds to the 14 trillion-dollar federal debt.  Do we hike the minimum wage?  I actually believe in the existence of a minimum wage, but hiking it now (or even later) is very inadvisable.  No, it’s fine that Waiting for “Superman” avoids demanding Anderson’s safety net.

She also writes that “few would disagree that the unions’ bloat and bureaucracy have often had a deleterious effect on public education . . .”    Why, then, haven’t people from the liberal elites voiced their opposition to the teachers’ unions?

 The parents of five lovable children in the film try to get their kids into charter schools–public schools independent of the public system.  Anderson says these schools “do not have high success rates,” and if that’s true, it is to her credit that she points it out.  Frankly, it means things are even worse than Guggenheim realizes.  Do see his documentary, though.  It’s worthwhile.  It does our society more good than do the impracticalities of armchair Progressive idealism.