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Film: Larks On A String
Release date: 14th March 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Jirí Menzel
Starring: Rudolf Hrusínský, Vlastimil Brodský, Václav Neckár, Jitka Zelenohorská, Jaroslav Satoranský
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Studio: Second Run
Format: DVD
Country: Czechoslovakia
Jiří Menzel, one of the all time greats of Czech cinema, first came to international attention in 1967 with his first feature, Closely Watched Trains, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Menzel’s Larks On A String was shot in 1968 but was suppressed by the Czech government for twenty-one years, until the fall of the Communist regime in 1990. Upon release, this long-lost black political comedy garnered wide acclaim, winning the Golden Bear at the 1990 Berlin Film Festival. The film is now receiving a UK DVD release through Second Run, with digitally remastered sound and picture.
Again collaborating with novelist Bohumil Hrabal, as he did with ...Trains, Menzel sets his picture in an oppressive industrial heartland, all creaking masses of metal junk, cold weather and sinister surveillance. This junkyard’s function is to smelt down scrap metal to create tractors and washing machines for the Communist party, yet its workers are a motley crew of ‘bourgeois elements’ sentenced for re-education through labour, including a philosophy professor, a lawyer, a saxophonist, a milkman, and a believer in God.
The other half of the junkyard is worked by a group of beautiful, kind-hearted women, ‘enemies of the state’ imprisoned by the regime for attempting to defect. The film’s plot follows both groups as they attempt to interact, forging emotional connections at odds with the strict, dehumanising regime calling the shots. A romance blossoms between a worker and a prisoner, dissenters are taken away by sinister men in suits, and a prison guard’s new marriage is portrayed as hilariously dysfunctional, the product of a society who’s demands on its people come at the expense of honesty, communication and emotional connection...
Larks On A String may strike some at first glance as a quaint and amusing farce. Its humour, at times, may seem silly, gentle or dated, but look a little closer and the film’s angry political convictions become clear. Menzel and Hrabal’s piece is a biting satirical attack on the dehumanising effects of communism on the individual.
Propagandist signs adorn the scrapyard, wryly juxtaposing slogans like ‘Rejoice! We are Working for Ourselves’ and ‘To Surpass and Overtake’, with images of our luckless bourgeois heroes sleeping or playing cards amongst the rubble. In fact, these men are part of the rubble, being ruthlessly crushed - forced to make way for the new world order. As the snooty party official says at one point, “We’ll melt them down into a new kind of people.” The chaos, danger and uncertainty of the piles of junk mirror the internal conflicts of the yard’s labourers.
There is a very tangible sinister undertone at play throughout the film, as those who speak out are taken away in cars and party officials wash local children with disturbing pleasure. Targets are increased without consultation, freedom of speech is denied, and, in one heartbreaking sequence, an old lady is worked so hard she cannot enjoy her own birthday meal, prepared with great love and care by her son. The ideals of the workers’ revolution, Menzel suggests, are an absurd sham. It is the workers, both blue and white collar, who still suffer.
The film’s main method of conveying this message is, however, through humour, ridiculing the hypocrisies of the party – a state official removes his tie and briefcase before addressing the men – and the uptight humorlessness of its bureaucrats. The film is dense with absurd little jokes: a worker is issued a written warning which he immediately uses as a serviette. “This man,” states the official, “will not die of natural causes.” The prison guard’s new wife refuses to share a bed with him, and they end up sleeping on top of a wardrobe.
As for the other side of the yard, the female prisoners are less well-explored. They are unanimously beautiful, a symbol of their innate goodness which is, perhaps, slightly over-simplistic. Their situation, however, still gets across the absurd harshness of the regime effectively. These so-called enemies of the revolution are simply nice young women whose only crime was to attempt to leave the country. The line which symbolically divides the two groups is gradually transgressed throughout the film, suggesting that the human spirit is, for Menzel, stronger than any party manifesto.
Whilst appearing a little gentle, at times, the history of this film’s censorship gives some indication of its political conviction. Underneath its silliness lie profound themes of alienation and a visceral anger at Czechoslovakia’s communist overlords. Without slipping into dogmatic lecturing, the film cleverly warns of the negative effects on the individual of bureaucratic heartlessness. The film’s tone of absurdist humour proves to be, in the end, its greatest weapon in exposing the absurdities of its target. KI
Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, 1990.
Filmed in 1968, whilst Czechoslovakia enjoyed a brief moment of political liberalization, Larks On A String is a searing political comedy from director Jiří Menzel and writer Bohumil Hrabal. Like their earlier Oscar-winning triumph Closely Observed Trains, it audaciously combines black humour with grim reality.
Set in a scrap metal yard where political dissidents are interned to be re-educated, the film is both a powerful critique of totalitarianism and a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit.
By the time Larks On A String was completed, the Soviet invasion had restored a repressive Communist regime. The film was promptly banned and remained unseen until 1990, when it was finally released to great acclaim winning the grand prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
This release features an all-new digital transfer, with restored picture and sound, and new English subtitle translation. The film is packaged with a booklet featuring an introduction by DoP Jaromír Šofr and a new essay by author and film programmer Peter Hames.
Film: Larks On A String
Release date: 14th March 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Jirí Menzel
Starring: Rudolf Hrusínský, Vlastimil Brodský, Václav Neckár, Jitka Zelenohorská, Jaroslav Satoranský
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Studio: Second Run
Format: DVD
Country: Czechoslovakia
DVD Special Features:
•
Jiří Menzel: 7 Questions – an idiosyncratic reflection on the film and its history, newly shot by the director specially for this DVD release
Film: I Served The King Of England
Release date: 26th May 2008
Certificate: 15
Running time: 114 mins
Director: Jiri Menzel
Starring: Ivan Barnev, Oldrich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch, Marián Labuda, Milan Lasica
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance/War
Studio: Arrow
Format: DVD
Country: Czech Republic/Slovakia
Waltzing with gaiety through dark times, the novel of the same name by renowned Czech author Bohumil Hrabal is brought to life by director Jiri Menzel in what is the duo’s sixth collaboration together. I Served The King Of England is two tales of one man, Jan Dite, set initially around the German invasion and the Second World War, and latterly his older self dealing with the fallout of the lengthy communist upheaval, that took place a handful of years after that war’s conclusion.
Beginning with the emergence of a world wearied Jan, after what appears to have been a lengthy tenure in prison; he departs the Czech capital and settles down in a deserted house, in a wooded glade, somewhere near the German border. He fills his days with the renovation of a derelict house, and befriends a couple of passersby who also have moved to the region to escape the communist agenda. While rebuilding and spending time with his only two sources of companionship, Jan recalls and looks back on his life with a warm fondness.
His younger self was in complete contrast to the individual he is now. He is an enthusiastic, yet small (which is referenced frequently) individual who, through studying the actions of those passing through his village’s train station, has learnt the influence and sway money holds over people. Swindling businessmen out of their hard-earned money as a hotdog vendor, Jan is spared by a savvy trader who instead of handing him over to the police encourages him to pursue his own entrepreneurial tendencies. So, Jan’s journey begins, as he moves slowly up the ranks of the service industry, from his lowly position as a waiter in the local restaurant to the gloriously prestigious setting of the Hotel Paříž in the capital city of Prague.
I Served The King Of England continues to veer back and forth between the two existences, marking the contrast between the person he is and the person he once was, as, while he manages to chance his way into some fortunate circumstances, he begins to learn that the wealth he yearns after comes at a price…
As is not often the case with novel to film adaptations, Obsluhoval jsem Anglického Krále (as it is in its native tongue) doesn’t suffer in the loss of any content from its original source. Not only is the novel itself not especially lengthy, thus allowing the key events to be transferred into motion picture, but given this is the sixth collaboration between the author and director, there is a great harmony in the translation. Hrabal points out that which is needed to make the story as true to its origins as possible, while Menzel captures and encourages the warmth out of his actors to make Jan Dite as believable a character as possible.
I Served The King Of England finds itself in a position of being very difficult to categorise. It is at heart a drama about one man’s life, yet it throws in so many different emotions, allowing itself to be immensely humorous one moment to poignantly serious the next. It addresses issues on the desires for financial gain, and at what human cost the complete determination to achieve this goal comes at, while playfully looking at the disadvantages and advantages of being short in stature - an equally diminutive Ethiopian Emperor awards Jan a medal because he cannot reach the neck height of the Hotel Paříž’s Maitre d’.
This cinematic multiplicity also happens to be the template for the protagonist himself, which makes his transformation into the straightforward, rurally inclined older Jan to be much more compelling. As young Jan begins his entrepreneurial journey, there is a great self-centeredness to his actions. While he moves around with baby-faced charms and natural gaiety, endearing himself to the viewer, his actions are always done to further his own gains, to achieve his ultimate goal of becoming a millionaire. It isn’t until the film’s second half, when it turns slightly darker, that we begin to see his trueself emerge. In one particular sequence of events, Jan rescues a blonde woman from being attacked by men on the street of Prague. After having developed a relationship with her, he takes her for lunch to the Hotel Paříž where she is refused service - as it transpires, she is a German Nazi. Jan’s relationship with her proves to be the film’s emotional crux, for where many would see a complete disregard for the political situations of the times, an ignorance and stupidity, the director and actor manage to maintain the protagonist’s charm and present a blissful naiveté, with unwavering loyalty and love in the face of public disdain.
I Served The King Of England is a very personal and bittersweet work for both the writer and director, as they visit dark and unsettling times in their nation’s history, while keeping the positives about what it is to be Czech - the optimism, the enthusiasm - and highlighting all that is beautiful about both the capital city and the surrounding countryside.
No puns about Czechs, cheques or checks, this is cinema at its most bare; a journey of human emotion and discovery that leaves you a better person for the experience. BL
