Sunny Days in Prague

His favorite amusement is to quietly drop a handful of coins on the floor or ground and watch as people chase after them. No matter where he is, it delights him that people from all walks of life never hesitate to get on their hands and knees to scurry after these small amounts of money, even a wealthy industrialist at an exclusive brothel who only moments earlier was showing off by lighting his cigar with a 100 crown note.

As well they should, he feels. What’s not to love about money? He doesn’t have much, but he looks forward to the day when, like his mentor, he has so much folding cash that he can lay the bills out end to end on his floor, the better to enjoy the sight of them.

He is Jan Dite, waiter, and he is at the center of I Served the King of England, the delightful new movie by the veteran Czech filmmaker Jiri Menzel.

That’s twice here I’ve used some form of the word “delight.” I must have scribbled it a dozen times in my notebook while watching this film most recently (after having first seen it last year at the Montreal World Film Festival). The word not only describes the reaction of the viewer to Menzel’s humorous, subtly mocking film, but also of many of the film’s characters as they enjoy their blessings.

In a particularly memorable scene, choreographed like a Hollywood musical, an African emperor holds a lavish banquet at the prestigious Prague restaurant where Dite is working. His guests are so elated by the elaborate feast that they rise from the table and begin to dance with their dinner plates.

I ask you, what could be more delightful?

If you’re a fan of Eastern European cinema, which tends to be more than a bit gloomy, you may think that this sounds uncharacteristically sunny. But while a puckish humor has always been an element of Menzel’s films (which include the beloved Oscar-winner Closely Watched Trains, from 1966, and the 1985 Oscar nominee My Sweet Little Village), this key figure in the Czech New Wave has not gone soft in his late years. I Served the King of England takes place in the 1930s and 1940s, and Dite’s rise in the world is concurrent with the growth of Nazism. “Dite” is the Czech world for “child,” and his childish insistence on taking everything at face value is an indictment or at least explanation of what it is in the national character of the Czechs that allowed their country to be so easily occupied by the Nazis.

Looking back on his life as an older man after he is released from prison (we don’t learn his crime until the end of the film), Dite still seems unable to comprehend history. So far from considering whether one person might have made a difference in opposing fascism, he barely sees it as affecting him personally, though the eye of the film is wider than his. His egotistic optimism lets him see everything through a filter of appreciation, even when the once-elegant bordello where he worked for a period becomes a Nazi breeding camp and later a spa for soldiers who lost limbs in combat.

Those who have criticized Menzel’s film for downplaying the crimes of the Nazis seem to me entirely to be missing the point, which is Dite’s inability to see what is going on around him.

I Served the King of England was a huge hit in the Czech Republic, and its virtues may not entirely translate to other audiences. (For one thing, it was adapted—as were many of Menzel’s films—from a novel by the beloved Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, giving homeland viewers a heads-up on what to expect.) I will leave it to those more learned than myself to judge to what degree book and film satirize a general Czech character.

But there is more than enough in Menzel’s film to—here’s that word again—delight the casual filmgoer. It was filmed in Prague, which by virtue of the many movies that have been shot there since the collapse of the Soviet Union appears to be one of the most beautiful cities on Earth. And Menzel misses no chance to indulge his love of silent comedies. Long stretches are wordless and filled with genial bits of slapstick. And he makes great use of the diminutive stature of actor Ivan Barnev, whose baby-face makes him look a little like a blond Harry Langdon.

I’ll say it one more time: delightful.