Chicago International Film Festival

by Anna Pulley

I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, Dir. Jirí Menzel , Czech)

In I Served the King of England, seasoned director Jiri Menzel, presented yet another adaptation from novelist Bohumil Hrabal; this would be the sixth time he's done so. But not having seen Menzel's other works, including Closely Watched Trains, which won him an Oscar forty years ago, all of his usual trademarks --naive young man protagonist, Nazis, campiness--were new to me. Menzel tends to veer toward slapstick comedy in a stylized Buster Keaton way, and I Served is no exception. Chronicling the years of a waiter Jan Dít? (Ivan Barnev) in a world-renowned Prague hotel, I Served is told mostly in flashbacks. Present-day Jan (Old?ich Kaiser) which means tiny man and is one of the many comic jabs at his stature, has just been released from a labor camp, after having served 14 years and 9 months of his 15 year sentence. He travels to a deserted German village and meets a young woman who ignites memories of his youthful exploits. Though their story ultimately goes nowhere, the flashbacks of Jan's life are comically delightful, a mix of Charlie Chaplin and The Producers.

Young Jan is incredibly expressive, naive and shallow, wanting nothing more than to become a millionaire (an irony that comes to bite him in the ass later). He learns early on that selfishness is a trait held by the millionaires he looks up to and plays with them by throwing coins on the floor to see dignitaries and businessmen scramble on their knees to pick them up. Part of Jan's education, aside from honing his waiter skills, involve many beautiful amazonian women whom he seduces with this attentiveness and wide-eyed demureness. He decorates their torsos post-coitus with everything from daisies to food to money, turning them into a kind of artful serving platter. The story turns gloomy as the German occupation starts to invade the prosperity of the hotel. Jan's co-workers, including his mentor, who learned all he knew because he served the King of England, are decidedly hostile to the Germans they must serve. Eventually Jan falls in love with a small German woman named Liza (Julia Jentsch) and is excommunicated from the hotel. Liza is so in love with Hitler and being German that she places a gigantic portrait of the Fuhrer by their bed and essentially makes love to it, which is as hilarious as it is disturbing. As the war rages on, a series of fortunate and unfortunate coincidences occur and Jan finally achieves his goal of becoming a millionaire, only to have it stripped away by the Communists and be thrown into a prison with other millionaires from his past. The circularity is telling, though Jan still doesn't fit in with his now poor counterparts and remains an outsider in the camp.

Menzel was at the screening I attended and gave a pretty drab Q&A afterwards, with the basic answer to all questions being "the Czechs are people of endurance." But the film itself was much more lively, beautifully shot and heavily visual. Indeed, the comic stylings leaned closely on the gimmickry of silent films and not on excessive dialogue or stunts. The flashback narration doesn't quite align, however, and the present day story tends to meander aimlessly, while the past story is engaging and pointed. The present tale is used as a kind of springboard for Jan's history but aside from that, it doesn't carry much narrative weight. Barring that, however, I Served is a charming account of humanistic fortitude. Most of Jan's life successes occur by happy accident and his obliviousness to what is happening outside of his small world make the film light-hearted and jovial, even in some of the more dismal moments.