This movie depicts the emotional bond between an aging Czech musician and a Russian boy living in then-Czechoslovakia in 1988. The time depicted is the turbulent period leading up to the Velvet Revolution, which was the relatively peaceful overthrow of the Communist Party government and one of the events marking the end of the Cold War.

Once a top cellist, Louka is now poor and makes a living with various part-time jobs. In exchange for money, he reluctantly has a sham marriage with a Russian woman in order for her to get a Czech passport, but this woman leaves behind her five-year-old son, Kolya, with his aunt and flees to West Germany. However, the aunt suddenly dies, and Louka is left to care for Kolya. At first, they feel awkward with each other, but gradually affection grows between the two. However, since Louka’s older brother also fled to the West, the secret police suspect Louka of helping the Russian woman flee the country with a fake marriage, and they start an investigation; also, a female social worker appears and is going to send Kolya to an orphanage in Russia… The story continues on, and ends with Czechoslovakia succeeding with the Velvet Revolution and overthrowing the rule of the Soviet Union.

Since the little boy who plays Kolya is too cute, and the story is filled with light humor and wit, one would think this movie is a heart-warming story of love between the little boy and the cellist, but I think this movie wants to depict the resentment of Czechs towards the rule of the Soviet Union, the day-to-day life of the people living under Soviet rule, and the emotional responses of people during turbulent times. The impression I get is that sweet Kolya is used to make the movie charming, but Kolya is just a cute child to an adult, and the depiction of the boy’s emotions is shallow. Also, Louka is depicted as an irresponsible man who chases after women. Is he just pretending to be an irresponsible womanizer in order to avoid attention after losing his former top social status, or is this his true personality? I can’t tell because Louka’s depiction is not deep enough. Perhaps the reason for depicting Louka this way is that the movie wants to draw a dramatic contrast between him at first being irresponsible and at the end being loving. However, the love that develops between the sweet-looking child and the cartoon-like adult is not very persuading. If this is a story of love, I must say it is a story made without the understanding of love.

Information provided by the radio and newspaper about the times is inserted throughout this movie, so the audience is able to understand what is happening in the outside world. Conversations between the people are frequently about how annoying Soviet Union soldiers are. In the end, this movie made after the victory of the Velvet Revolution seems to have the intention of documenting, “what life was like for people under the tyrannical rule of the Soviet Union,” and that, “Czechs hated the Nazis. But the Soviet Union that came afterwards was as bad.” First Secretary Alexander Dubček played a central role in the “Prague Spring” reformation movement in 1968, but the Warsaw Treaty Organization led by the Soviet Union later crushed it with a military intervention; Czechoslovakia became a secret police nation like East Germany, and people lived holding their breath, in fear of being informed on.

However, things have certainly changed. Hungary at last decided to open the national border with Austria in 1989. Since it was feasible for people of East Germany to make their way to Hungary, many East Germans started trying to enter Hungary; from there, they could cross the national border to Austria, then from there, move to West Germany. Also, just like Kolya’s mother in this movie, people from Russia moved to Czech territories—where entry was allowed—and planned to use a Czech passport to flee further to West Germany. Even if East Germany citizens didn’t have a Hungarian passport, countless East Germans went to Hungary in hopes of somehow crossing the national border to Austria.

In August of 1989, the Hungarian Democratic Forum held the Pan-European Picnic in Sopron, the Hungarian town nearest to Austria. Rumors saying that those who participated in this meeting could cross over the national border spread, and a great number of East Germany citizens gathered in this town; one after another, they started to cross the national border, but Hungarian authorities didn’t stop them. This news spread within East Germany, and even more citizens of East Germany gathered at the Hungary and Czechoslovakia borders in order to cross over to Austria and West Germany, respectively. Stimulated by this news, citizens in East Germany demanded more and more for freedom, and the Berlin Wall at last came down on November 10, 1989. On November 17, the Velvet Revolution broke out in Czechoslovakia, and the Communist Party administration collapsed. The Soviet Union did not intervene anymore. The humiliation of the Prague Spring was not repeated.

Zdeněk Svěrák, who played Louka in this movie, also wrote the script, while his son Jan Svěrák directed the movie. Jan Svěrák was only 30 years old when he picked up the megaphone for this movie, and he was a 23-year-old student when the Velvet Revolution happened. This movie seems to be loaded with Zdeněk’s desire to convey to the young generation, including his son, what life was like under the Soviet Union system, and the hope he has as a father for his son’s future. Zdeněk Svěrák was 32 years old when he experienced the Prague Spring.

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This movie is based on a novel by author Bohumil Hrabal—who wrote the original story of the Czech movie I Served the King of England—and was adapted into a movie by director Jiří Menzel—who also did the movie adaptation of I Served the King of England. In other words, I Served the King of England and Closely Watched Trains were written by the same original author and adapted into a movie by the same director. At first I thought that the evasive satire and dark humor seen in I Served the King of England was only possible after the communist regime collapsed, but Closely Watched Trains is equally a shamelessly satirical tragicomedy. Considering that this movie was made while Czechoslovakia was still under the Communist Party, and also that Jiří Menzel was just the young age of 28 when he made this movie, all I can say is that Jiří Menzel is amazing. Or maybe it’s Bohumil Hrabal who is amazing.

Jiří Menzel was one of the young movie writers that participated in what could be called the Czech New Wave that was emerging in the 1960s. Closely Watched Trains received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Due to the Soviet Army suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring, which occurred soon after this award, many movie directors took refuge abroad, but Menzel stayed in Czechoslovakia. Following this, he was once again nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award in 1986 for his My Sweet Little Village, but otherwise there was a long blank in his career until 1989, when the communist regime collapsed.

This movie is about the people working at a small station in a small village in Czechoslovakia, which was occupied by Nazi Germany, during World War II. The stationmaster is crazy about keeping pigeons. Train dispatcher Hubička is envied by the stationmaster for being for some reason popular with women, but he doesn’t have any other skills. The elderly station attendant is no longer useful at all. Miloš is the protagonist of the movie. His grandfather was a hypnotist, but when he tried to defend Prague by hypnotizing the invading German army, he was crushed by a German army tank and died. Miloš’s father was a railway worker, but retired early; because of his father’s retirement, Miloš replaces his father at the station by working as an intern. Miloš secretly has a crush on a cute, young conductor, but when he is unable to become a man sexually in front of her, he is distraught and attempts suicide.

So the story goes, and on the surface it appears to be a story of quite flawed men lazily working, but actually, at that time, the shadow of the defeat of the German army was creeping in; also, trains fully loaded with dead people and weapons pass through this station every day, but this is hidden from viewers initially. And then what?!! Hubička, Miloš, and the old station attendant—three people everyone thought were incompetent—heroically blow up a heavily guarded “closely watched train” that is carrying the war equipment for the German army. However, the movie finishes with a sad ending.

Closely Watched Trains, like I Served the King of England, reveals the surrounding heavy reality as we follow the actions of the careless protagonist and laugh.

This movie is very much told from the perspective of a man. This movie shows that, in order to become a man, a man questions himself, suffers, and tries hard. For Miloš, experiencing sex and participating in resistance activities seem to be proof of his value as a man. This movie makes me cynical about the idea of a man casting away his virginity and going to war as a rite of passage because he feels that, although the unknown world is scary, he will not become a man without going through this. A woman may not understand this rite of passage completely, but she may want to say, “Relax! A woman doesn’t judge a man by that!” A woman may find herself being attracted to Miloš, who is timid and refuses to go to war, but does outrageous things as part of the resistant partisans.

The story advances by constantly balancing contradictory concepts—innocence and scheming, fun and sadness, optimistic serenity and cruelty of war, youth and maturity—and the movie makes the audience wonder, “What’s going on?” or “What happens now?” or “What on earth is true?”; by doing this, the movie hooks the audience until the very end of the film. It is incredible.

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being is the film adaptation of the novel of the same name written by author Milan Kundera, who took refuge in France after the Soviet Army suppressed Czech’s freedom movement that took place in 1968 (the Prague Spring); this movie depicts the different fates of four people living through turbulent times with the Prague Spring of Czechoslovakia in the background.

Tomas lives in Prague, and is young, handsome, and a skilled surgeon. He loves women and is loved by women, and he is a man who openly has relations with several women at the same time; he has a relationship with an artist Sabina, who is the only woman Tomas acknowledges understands him. One day, Tomas goes to a small spa town in order to perform surgery, and there he meets a young woman named Tereza. Tereza is an avid reader and loves reading Tolstoy, but she feels that none of her friends in the village understand her. When Tereza sees Tomas sitting and waiting on the same bench—among the many benches available—that she always sat on, and senses Prague culture in him, she becomes deeply entranced by Tomas and later follows him to Prague. Tomas, who appeared to be set on remaining single, is attracted to Tereza, and the two end up getting married.

Tereza is inspired by Sabina and tries to become a photographer, but during this time, the Soviet Army invades Czechoslovakia in order to suppress the growing desire for freedom, and many people are murdered. Sabina, Tomas, and Tereza take refuge in Geneva. Tereza shows a Swiss magazine the photographs she took in the face of danger of the oppression by the Soviet Army, but people in Switzerland are already bored of the Prague Spring event, and she is told to bring more interesting photographs. Sabina meets a devoted, honest professor named Hans. Tereza thinks she is not a strong enough person to live in a foreign country, like Sabina and Tomas, and so she returns to Czechoslovakia. Tomas has to decide between staying in free Switzerland with Sabina and returning to his oppressed homeland Czechoslovakia to be with Tereza. Tomas decides to return to Czechoslovakia, but his passport is confiscated when he re-enters the country, so it is a one-way trip and he can’t return to free countries.

While Tomas was in Switzerland, the Soviet Army had successfully implemented oppressive measures, and Prague had become a completely different town. Tomas is categorized as an anticommunist, so he is deprived work as a surgeon and has to make a living as a custodian. Tereza is devastated by the transformation of Prague, and becomes depressed and considers suicide. The two move out to the countryside, adapt to their new life, and are able to find true happiness despite their modest lifestyle; the moment they find happiness, though, a tragedy occurs.

The appeal of this movie is that the depictions of the individual personalities and the relationships between Tomas and Tereza, as well as between Sabina and Hans, are very delicate, beautiful, and persuasive.

When Tomas and Sabina meet, a mirror is always used. This symbolizes the relationship of Tomas and Tereza as well as of Sabina and Hans. If I were to depict the relationships of the four people with a picture, Tomas and Tereza are lying in bed next to a large mirror. When Tomas looks at the mirror, Sabina—not Tomas—is reflected back. Then, Hans is lying down next to Sabina. When Tomas approaches the mirror, Sabina also approaches the mirror. When Tomas moves away from the mirror, Sabina also moves away. However, Tomas doesn’t need to break the mirror to be with Sabina. Tomas and Sabina are a man and a woman bound together like Siamese twins, tied by their souls. Even when they are apart, or even if they are both with someone else, their spirits are always joined.

However, it is only Tereza that Tomas truly loves. Tereza is like the sun and illuminates everything, and when she is around, the world and other women look beautiful; but when she is gone, the world is dark, and other women don’t enter Tomas’s field of vision at all. Tomas is light and freewheeling, but his beliefs do not waver. Before the Prague Spring, he said to his friends who excitedly talked about politics, “I am not interested in politics at all.” However, during the oppression by the Soviet Union, people rapidly switched to protecting themselves, informing on each other, and hiding what they were feeling; on the other hand, Tomas, who refused to change himself, was oppressed as someone who was against the establishment. However, even though the job that he loved is snatched away, he remains as light and unwavering as ever.

Tereza is influenced by Tomas and Sabina, who live lightly in the city (so it seems), and so makes a great effort to do so herself; she experiments with various things, but learns in the end that in order to be happy, she is the kind of person who needs to be rooted near nature. Although Tereza does not realize it, she is naturally very sexually attractive without trying, and Tomas is deeply attracted to her because of who she is naturally.

Sabina, while her and Tomas’s hearts are nearly identical, is a woman who earns a living with a paintbrush, while Tomas uses a scalpel to perform surgery. Although she is woman, she is more willing to live this vagrant lifestyle than men. She doesn’t know how or where in this large earth she will die, but she has the attitude that she’ll live holding onto her paintbrush with all her might, even if she dies by the side of the road. Honest and ethical Hans cannot help but be attracted to Sabina, who is completely different from himself.

I happened to watch The Unbearable Lightness of Being around the same time as the Norwegian Wood movie based on Haruki Murakami’s novel; although the two movies are set in the same time period (late 1960s) and depict a very similar theme, I thought it was interesting that the depiction and resolution were fundamentally different.

In Norwegian Wood, the society in Japan has peace without the fear of war, freedom, personal safety, and secure money to live a good life; yet somehow the youth have a locked up feeling, and they get wrapped up in socialism, believing it to be a ray of hope to save their society. The protagonist, who is of course the projection of Haruki Murakami, is not able to sympathize with the movement of the youth of his same generation, but his friends around him commit suicide one after another. The young people committing suicide have their parents’ love and are brought up in a blessed environment, but they heavily obsess over something, as if they are fixated on watching the hole of their stocking getting bigger and bigger every day. And so they commit suicide. The protagonist is also affected by this attitude, but after wandering, weeping until his nose dripped, and an overly dramatic journey of self-discovery, he decides, “I will live.”

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, for the youth living in a society where freedom of speech has been snatched away and there is economic injustice, socialism is evil, and the youth wishes for Czechoslovakia to become a free nation. Tomas is not the kind of person who fixates on the negatives. Therefore, he is light, and even though he criticizes the system or another person, he doesn’t blame them. He lives life like a swan calmly floating on the surface of a turbulent lake without being affected by the waves. By doing so, he calmly finds happiness. When Sabina and Tomas meet in Geneva alone, Sabina had already decided to move further west, while Tomas had decided to return to Czechoslovakia, but they don’t say anything about this. Suddenly, Sabina utters, “This may be the last time we see each other.” Tomas’s facial expression changes just one millimeter, and he nods, saying, “That may be so.” It was indeed an eternal farewell. However, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, nobody commits suicide. They each make every possible effort to survive through difficult times.

Both movies feature the music of the Beatles in a very important way. However, what the Beatles’ music conveys to the youth is completely different in the two movies. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the music of the Beatles symbolizes the desire for freedom, while in Norwegian Wood, it symbolizes the melancholia that they don’t understand the true nature of.

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