Reviews

I agree with most of the comments above. This movie is an absolute gem. The CZ communist regime, however harsh and unfriendly towards many artists - including Hrabal and Menzel, was quite supportive to the film industry and the film directors had state grants for their work and advisory boards consisting of educated people evaluating every new movie to be made. Also there was no pressure to make the movies commercially successful as you can see now, and that is how communists actually helped to create the Czech Wave of great movies in 60's and later....I just read an interview with Menzel where he talks of this and compares the situation of before 1989 and now....Hrabal certainly was a genius, I remember that even Kundera said that Hrabal was just a talent by god that he was above all Czech writers of his time....cant agree that he is not known in western Europe, I met some people in France who approached me in a street when they saw that I am reading his novel and started to talk of their love for Hrabal. Also some Canadians whom I know here in London mentioned this movie to me several times by themselves, they just could not remember the name, only the characters :))....Cant wait to see the "English King" in the movies, Menzel says that it took him over a year to work on the screenplay and seems to be aware of the magnitude of the work....unfortunately now when Hrabal is dead he cant assist Menzel with the work as he did before...well, we'll see...

This movie is just so bad! It is all fake - technically good, but fake.... As a Czech I agree with all the Czechs before me who noted that this film was intentionally created to be "effective" in the west. Sverak seized his opportunity and used the historical fact that people in the west may be interested in a story like this at that time. This is a Hollywood style made movie that is apparently created by a Czech for non-Czechs and as can be seen from the previous contributions - it found its viewers - people who call it Czechoslovakian - although it is purely Czech, people who believe it describes life in USSR - we were never part of the USSR, and even people who believe it was political and helped us to fight the Russian oppression - the movie was made in 1996, long after the revolution.....after all it shows the communist reality so unrealistic - so sweet....full of romantic pictures....so that the stupid Americans who need to see the world black and white can understand it....it is a well packed sweet product from a far away easteuropan country which explains in pictures how it all was.....I absolutely hate this film and think that there are hundreds of better Czech movies, especially from the 60's, but I am not sure that the people in the West, especially in the US would ever get them - they are too realistic and it takes time and requires some intellectual curiosity which most of them are missing.....The worst thing is that once, years from now, people will look at it, none of them will have a direct experience with communism and they will cry over this story and think of how bad, but actually "interesting" times they were!....I can literally see the annoying tourists coming to Prague these days and bearing in mind this movie with its cute pictures, music, universal story and a "very interesting period called Communism"....I am going to stop now - this movie make me angry even now!