Despite the title, Czech director Jir’iacute; Menzel’s new comedy, I Served the King of England, is not about England or its king. Menzel instead stays focused on what interested him during the Czech New Wave of the 1960s – sex, status and wartime tribulations.
Set against the backdrop of modern Czech history, I Served the King follows Jan D’iacute;te (Ivan Barnev), an ambitious waiter who aspires to be a millionaire. He begins humbly, selling frankfurters at the train station, but is quick to scale the social ladder. Jan becomes a waiter at one fine restaurant after another, until cunningly landing a job as headwaiter at the most prestigious hotel in Prague.
Along the way, he marvels at the carefree lifestyle of the wealthy industrialists he serves; he longs for the respect rewarded to the rich. Jan learns that "money can lay the world at your feet," and resolves to do whatever it takes to achieve the good life.
As he gains more money, he gains confidence to pursue women, and does so quite successfully. This offers big laughs because Jan’s shrimpy stature doesn’t shout "ladies man." Indeed, he’s an unlikely hero in a film filled with sexual exploration.
After a succession of brief relationships, Jan settles down with a Nazi named L’iacute;za (Julia Jentsch) who helps him finally become a millionaire, but when the Nazis move out of Czechoslovakia and the communists move in, Jan’s life takes some dramatic turns.
In telling this story, Menzel found inspiration by tapping the creative spirit of those who came before him, such as Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers and Federico Fellini. By turns daring and subtle, I Served the King is told with humor that’s successful on many levels. Some of the jokes are pure slapstick while others employ a satirical tone.
By parodying the absurdity of Nazi ideology, the film’s second half takes on a political consciousness. But Jan himself is slow to awake to the horrors of German occupation. He may be perceptive in the dining room and bedroom, but that’s about it, for in other areas his intellect leaves much to be desired. He ambles through life never acknowledging the enormity of the historic events around him or how they affect him.
It seems all that keeps Jan afloat is perseverance and luck. In one hilarious scene, Jan is awarded a medal from a dwarf-sized Ethiopian emperor only because they’re both short and the emperor couldn’t physically bestow the medal to another -perhaps more deserving – waiter. Such episodes of serendipity have been entertaining since the silent era.
It is moments like this that make I Served the King an achievement. Thanks to Ivan Barnev’s performance, Jan remains pretty likeable in spite of his flaws. Even when cooperating with Nazis, he has an innocent, boyish obliviousness that’s hard not to find disarming.
An older Jan (Oldrich Kaiser) carries on the likeability but sheds the naivete. Throughout the film, he looks back on his younger, bittersweet years, contemplating what he has learned and lost. In the end he walks away from his youth feeling wiser, and so do we.
I Served the King doesn’t measure up to Menzel’s preceding masterpiece, Closely Watched Trains (1966), but does offer ample laughs, solid performances, and some zany moments unlike anything else seen in cinema these days.
I Served the King of England is now playing at Houston’s Angelika Film Center.
