DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Bohumil Hrabal: I Served The King Of England

**xtrslots** · 08-26-2009, 11:26 AM

I watched Jiri Menzel's adaptation of I Served The King Of England yesterday. Not a bad film at all, it stays (for the most part) very faithful to the book and manages to capture both Hrabal's bawdy humour - and it is very funny - and his more bitter observations. Some really good performances as well. Unfortunately, Menzel is a little too fond of voice-overs, and while the cinematography is simply beautiful, that becomes a bit of a problem when Menzel starts fetishizing naked women as much as his main character does. I'm not entirely sure he tied together the actions of young Dite and the philosophies of old Dite as well as he might have, either. But hey, it works, and it's worth a watch, even if it's not nearly as good as the book.

See, Menzel is one of those guys whose movies no one has really seen since the late 1960s. Bad sign. All of a sudden, nearly 40 years later, he's making a movie based on a book by the guy on whose books he based his last really great movies so long ago. To me it sounds like a filmmaker desperately trying to regain some former prestige (most reviews of King of England I've read seem to verify that). Sometimes, for whatever reason, an artist just loses his touch. There are a number of great examples in film: Preston Sturges, Jancso Miklos, Robert Altman, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abbas Kiarostami. These guys, like Menzel, when they were cooking on all four burners, were real masters of their medium. But the tendency is to burn bright for 10-15 years and then... nothing. I highly recommend anyone seek out Menzel's Closely Watched Trains (in the UK Closely Observed Trains) and Larks on a String. Two very, very great and beautiful movies.

08-26-2009, 11:26 AM	#6
xtrslots Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 509 Senior Member	I watched Jiri Menzel's adaptation of I Served The King Of England yesterday. Not a bad film at all, it stays (for the most part) very faithful to the book and manages to capture both Hrabal's bawdy humour - and it is very funny - and his more bitter observations. Some really good performances as well. Unfortunately, Menzel is a little too fond of voice-overs, and while the cinematography is simply beautiful, that becomes a bit of a problem when Menzel starts fetishizing naked women as much as his main character does. I'm not entirely sure he tied together the actions of young Dite and the philosophies of old Dite as well as he might have, either. But hey, it works, and it's worth a watch, even if it's not nearly as good as the book. See, Menzel is one of those guys whose movies no one has really seen since the late 1960s. Bad sign. All of a sudden, nearly 40 years later, he's making a movie based on a book by the guy on whose books he based his last really great movies so long ago. To me it sounds like a filmmaker desperately trying to regain some former prestige (most reviews of King of England I've read seem to verify that). Sometimes, for whatever reason, an artist just loses his touch. There are a number of great examples in film: Preston Sturges, Jancso Miklos, Robert Altman, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abbas Kiarostami. These guys, like Menzel, when they were cooking on all four burners, were real masters of their medium. But the tendency is to burn bright for 10-15 years and then... nothing. I highly recommend anyone seek out Menzel's Closely Watched Trains (in the UK Closely Observed Trains) and Larks on a String. Two very, very great and beautiful movies.
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