Based on Bohumil Hrabal\u2019s novel, Closely Watched Trains<\/em> is set in a provincial Czech town far from the battlefront of WWII but nonetheless beholden to its Nazi occupiers. It\u2019s a sleepy place, marked by an adherence to the ticking of machinery and a reverence for uniforms, even if the men in them are mostly inept. In the opening scene we\u2019re introduced to Milo\u0161 Hrma (pop star V\u00e1clav Neck\u00e1\u0159) as he prepares for his first day as a train dispatcher. Milo\u0161 comes from a long line of bumblers and malingerers, including a magician grandfather who attempted to hypnotize invading German soldiers and got his head cut off by tanks for his trouble. Awkward and shy, Milo\u0161 seems destined to meet a similarly ignominious end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He fits in well with his colleagues, though, who are a motley crew of misfits. Despite the fact that they\u2019ve been forced to sign an affidavit that they\u2019ll comport themselves on the job or face the death penalty, they mostly seem to want to liberate themselves from boredom. There\u2019s the stationmaster, who breeds pigeons and is regularly seen covered in their shit. His frequent decrying of the country\u2019s lack of morals is directed largely at dispatcher Hubi\u010dka, who is a relentless seducer of women, often using the station\u2019s back room for his trysts. Milo\u0161, too, has a budding romance with conductor M\u00e1\u0161a; much of the film\u2019s plot concerns itself with his quest to rid himself of his virginity, which is hampered by his shame over his inability to perform sexually. \u201cYou\u2019re just overly sensitive,\u201d a young doctor assures Milo\u0161 after he attempts suicide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Author Milan Kundera called the source novel<\/a> “an incredible union of earthly humor and baroque imagination,\u201d and Menzel\u2019s direction shares a similar exuberance. Visual genitalia puns abound, from a cigarette tip cut with comically large scissors to the stationmaster caressing a rip in a sofa. At one point Milo\u0161 confesses his premature ejaculation issues while the stationmaster\u2019s wife diligently strokes a dead goose\u2019s neck. And of course there are the trains with their belching steam and clockwork timing that requires careful observation, and pulling the right levers. Menzel\u2019s camera lingers on the delights of the flesh, too, particularly during a sequence that acquires a potent erotic charge as Hubi\u010dka seduces the office telegraphist by imprinting rubber stamps to her bare skin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All these antics are building to a tragic end, albeit one with the requisite big bang. Eventually Hubi\u010dka enlists Milo\u0161 in an act of resistance: they\u2019ll drop a bomb on a passing train carrying ammunition to the SS. Things don\u2019t go entirely according to plan, and Menzel saves his bleakest punchline for last. \u201cDo you know what the Czechs are? Laughing animals,\u201d Nazi collaborator Zedn\u00ed\u010dek proclaims \u2013 a declaration senior official Reinhard Heydrich once actually made \u2013 moments before the blast. Flattened against the building by the blowback, Hubi\u010dka proves him right, cackling to the sky as black smoke fills the frame. That impish spirit, Menzel suggests, is its own form of defiance, and perhaps the only one that can truly endure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Menzel was only twenty-eight years old when he made Closely Watched Trains<\/em>, but his youth belies the gravity of his intent. Milo\u0161\u2019s impotence stands in for the perils of an entire country\u2019s passivity, and while his fate is a cosmic joke, it\u2019s also a warning. Born in 1938, Menzel\u2019s life at that point was bookended by invasions. But as Peter Hames points out in his book-length study<\/a> of the Czech New Wave, it would be wrong to interpret the film as a mere metaphor for what was happening in the country at the time. Instead it might be better read as a mournful reflection on history\u2019s eternal return, where the same conditions keep producing the same results.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike many of his fellow artists, Menzel remained in the Czech Republic despite several of his subsequent films being banned by the Communist regime. Whether this was out of stubbornness or necessity is hard to say. None of his work would reach quite the level of international success as Closely Watched Trains<\/em>, but he would remain a humanistic and sly screen presence to the end, unafraid to be the finger in the eye of his oppressors. Such provocation feels galvanizing in our politically fraught times, and yet Menzel himself would say they\u2019re hardly unique. This machine might kill fascists, but there\u2019s no guarantee they\u2019ll stay dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Closely Watched Trains” is streaming on the Criterion Channel.<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/closely2-1024x768.jpeg\")
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