Description
Forty years after the international success of Closely Watched Trains, writer/director Jirí Menzel returns with an epic black comedy, adapted from a novel by the same author, Bohumil Hrabal. Jan (Ivan Barnev) is short in height but high in ambition. The social-climbing, opportunistic, irrepressible waiter/everyman dreams of becoming a millionaire. Always striving to please (and get ahead), he leaves his job at a pub for a luxury brothel, and then graduates to the most beautiful hotel in Prague. Along the way he enjoys lots of beautiful women and luscious food (often combined). In 1938 Hitler annexes Czechoslovakia; Jan falls madly in love with Líza (Julia Jentsch, Sophie Scholl), a German-speaking Czech who hero-worships Hitler. After Jan passes an Aryan test, they wed—but the war separates them. The story is told in flashback by a sadder and wiser Jan, just released from a stretch in a communist jail, reflecting on the turbulent times he has survived and on his luck ("always bad").
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