I Served the King of England

An extravagant, visually stunning feast of sensory delights, "I Served the King of England," Jiri Menzel's winsome comedy, set in World War II-era Prague, pirouettes along a beguiling but treacherous line between horror and whimsy.

The story of a young waiter's education in the ways of sex, money and power, "I Served the King of England" often evokes such icons as Jay Gatsby and Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp in its depiction of striving and innocence. But the film, adapted from a novel by Bohumil Hrabal, could only have been wrought by Czech artists, drenched in bittersweet irony as pungent and intoxicating as plum brandy.

Jan Dite (Ivan Barnev) wants only one thing in life: to be a millionaire. Living in a provincial town "between the wars," Jan will do just about anything for money, including sell sausages in a train station and work as a waiter slinging pilsner at a local pub. One of Jan's favorite pastimes is flinging a handful of coins on the floor, then watching the bigwigs he serves get down on their hands and knees to scoop them up. When he makes the acquaintance of a successful businessman, his future mentor gives him sage advice: "You have to know how to throw your change away so that it comes back in bank notes."

Menzel, whose Oscar-winning 1966 film "Closely Watched Trains" was adapted from another Hrabal novel, spares nothing in reconstructing Jan's world of heedless indulgence, creating a series of mouthwatering tableaux of banquets that as often as not veer toward orgies (women and food enjoy pointedly retrograde equal status here). But scenes of rapturous beauty also give way with startling alacrity to horror, such as when a high-end brothel where Jan works changes to a clinic for eugenics (populated by perfectly blond Aryan goddesses), then to a hospital treating injured war veterans.

This splendid late-career offering emanates fairytale enchantment with touches of magic realism, while also accurately illustrating the precariousness of moral and ethical development through the hero’s observation that “a person becomes human almost against his own will.”

"I Served the King of England" is a brilliant, witty and profound tragicomedy that reflects on recent Czech history with a highly imaginative, darkly humorous and strongly sensual tone. In Czech and German with English subtitles, it is rated R and has a running time of