Stasis and the Unexpected in “Closely Watched Trains” Anonymous College

Jiri Menzel’s 1966 film Closely Watched Trains, with its plot that follows a young slacker’s daily routine and its extremely languid pace, at first seems to cast a lazily nostalgic eye toward WWII-era Czechoslovakia. However, during pivotal moments in the narrative, the tone of the film entirely switches from placid comedy to melodrama. These unexpected tone switches reveal more about the world that the film’s characters inhabit, a world shaped by the absurdly unpredictable and inconsistent dangers of wartime. Two scenes in particular reflect the chaos that characterized the lives of Czechoslovakian civilians during the war: the air raid and the finale. These two scenes that, respectively, give the plot its first main conflict and its climax both feature juxtapositions of death and laughter during their most audio-visually intense moments. The ironic contrast of humor and pathos in these violent scenes might otherwise come across as farcical if the effect of this contrast was to significantly alter, rather than to suddenly deviate from the steady tone of the film. Instead, as isolated incidents, these scenes are rather jarring. They thus effectively serve to remind the viewer that the atmosphere of the German occupation was one...