Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Claire Dunne One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

rooee 1968's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film went to this debut feature from Jiri Menzel, which concerns the comedic and tragic events at a small railway station during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia during the Second World War.Essentially a coming-of-age story, the film focuses on Milos Hrma (Vaclav Neckar), a young man learning the ropes as a station guard. He's surrounded by unwise elders, including an outwardly moralistic stationmaster, as well as a visiting councillor, whose Nazi-endorsing propaganda falls on deaf ears all round. But all Milos wants to do is get his end away with flirty conductor Masa (Jitka Bendova) without falling prey to premature ejaculation.Certainly, like his father, Milos has no intention to actually do any work – until, that is, his sexual frustration is harnessed by a beautiful Resistance agent, who convinces him to blow up a Nazi ammunition train. Perhaps he's influenced by the spirit of his grandfather, a hypnotist who tried and failed to halt the fascist occupation by stopping tanks through the power of suggestion.Considering Menzel was just 28 at the time, his control of the material is remarkable. It's a deliberately tonally-awkward film, juxtaposing broad sex comedy with, amongst other things, a surreal air raid, a properly distressing suicide scene, and brutal gut-punch of an ending.So, the tone is mutable, the style is formal, and the comedy is deadpan – the influence on modern filmmakers like Wes Anderson and Jared Hess is in abundance.For all its whimsy and kinkiness and ironic jabs at moral imperialism (one character wails to his wife about the decline of social morality as he lusts over the dispatcher's saucy cousin), the ultimate message – that youthful lust can be so easily appropriated for the cause of another's ideology – is dead serious. Milos is a mostly passive entity throughout, and his only moments of assertiveness are self-defeating acts of violence.I recently saw Milos Forman's The Firemen's Ball, another risqué comedy from the Czech New Wave. For me, Closely Observed Trains is the pick of the two, thanks largely to the relatable presence of the clueless youth through whom we watch the authoritarian madness unfurl. It's genuinely funny in places, and secretly quite moving.

lttoth Hello In the discussion of sex and the young man's preoccupation with his personal life, his attempted suicide and the image of him being saved is often overlooked. The formation of his body as he is carried away from his death is in the shape of Michaelangelo's Pieta. In my mind, at least, this image ties his willingness to ultimately sacrifice his self-absorption for the greater good to that of the Christ.Even his quest for sexual satisfaction is fulfilled by putting his own needs on hold to contribute to the Resistance. A collaborating agent ensures that his needs are fulfilled, perhaps knowing better than he the risk that he will be taking.I suppose that image stuck with me having been raised Christian and also one who embraced art through the ages, but it touched me because it reminded me that we who live ordinary, simple, and seemingly unfulfilled lives may be called upon to do more...and in answering the call, do great and necessary things.

Balkanibal Although it's made 43 years ago it's easy to watch and it's easy to relate to. Clear and simple human story full of warm Czech humor and real-life characters. It's about a young man who gets a job in Czech railway company in the midst of WWII. There is a main story but it's almost as if the big story is not important but the characters. Bare in mind that this is Menzel's first serious film and he won an Oscar with it. The film itself is a total opposite from films today, there are no visual effects, there are no big celebrity names, the budget wasn't big (I suppose), but the story is great and the actors convey the message in a convincing manner, for me this is what a film is all about. Although I have respect for some of the directors today, but they all kind of forget that it's the story that drives the film. Download it from a torrent, buy chocolate chip biscuits, make some Earl Gray tea and enjoy.

Dennis Littrell The "Closely Watched Trains" are those that are carrying supplies to the German army in and through occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II. That is why they are closely watched--so that they run on time. But they are also closely watched by the people of Czechoslovakia, especially dispatcher Hubicka (Josef Somr) and his trainee Milos Hrma (Vaclav Neckar) for another reason, which will become apparent as the movie ends.Not that Milos and Hubicka are especially diligent workers. On the contrary. What Hubicka is especially adept at is seduction of females while Milos is distracted by his worries about becoming a man. He has what must be seen as a problem demanding comic relief (if you will). He has trouble pleasing his girl friend because of premature ejaculation. He is so consumed by this embarrassing failure that he seeks quietus in the warm bath of a bordello. Meanwhile Hubicka is able to please the pretty young telegraphist Virginia Svata (Jitka Zelenohorska) by playing a kind of strip poker with her and rubber stamping her pretty legs and butt much to her delight and to the consternation of her mother when she finds out. The German Councilor Zednicek (Vlastimil Brodsky) who tolerates no hanky-panky when it comes to keeping the trains moving conducts an investigation and comes to the conclusion that Hubicka is guilty of misuse and abuse of the great German language because he stamped German words onto Virginia's body! This is the tone of the film, wryly ironic, irreverent and mildly comedic, employing in a sense a kind of off-center "theater of the absurd" treatment. Director Jiri Menzel, who appears briefly in the film as Dr. Brabec who diagnoses Milos's "affliction," spun this off from a novel by Bohumil Hrabal, but it could easily have come from a novel by Jaroslav Hasek, who wrote the celebrated Czech classic, "The Good Soldier Svejk," so alike in treatment and tone are they, and so very characteristic of the Czech national mind-set vis-a-vis all the horrors of the European wars. Menzel concentrates on the petty affairs of day-to-day peasant life, sex, the raising of pigeons and geese, the boredom of bureaucratic jobs as he works toward the culminating scene in which the heroics seem almost light-hearted and to come about more from happenstance than from careful planning.Some of the scenes in the movie are absolutely unique in the world of cinema and suggest a kind of cinematic genius. The creepy goose-stuffing (for foie gras pate) scene in which Milos seeks help with his "problem" from an older woman is riotous--or would be riotous if we were not so amazed as what she is doing while talking to him and what it LOOKS like she might be doing! The scene in which Stationmaster Lanska is torn between the prospect of seducing a voluptuous woman and the chance that he might miss supper reminded me of a little boy at play with his mother calling him home for dinner. The final scene in which it looks like Menzel may have employed a wind machine is just so perfectly presented, combining as it does the stark realism of the war and a delicious (but soon to be mixed) personal triumph of the resistance.This is one of the classic films of all time. But prepare to put aside ordinary viewing habits and to concentrate with an alert mind. The subtleties of Menzel's little masterpiece will be obscured by inattention, preconceptions and faulty expectations. (Or at least that is what they'll tell you at film school.) See this Oscar winner (Best Foreign Film, 1967) for Jiri Menzel who survived oppression and censorship by the Soviets and is still making movies.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)