Jirí Menzel

(On Cable TV, March 2022) For a film with such a downbeat trajectory, there’s a lustful comedy aspect to Closely Watched Trains that helps it go by faster. The story of a young man working at a rural train station and pining after a local girl, writer-director Jirí Menzel’s film eventually reveals itself to be about Nazi oppression during their occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the efforts of the resistance at destroying German trains. The high-and-low mixture between comedy and tragedy is not necessarily smooth: You can appreciate the rough humour of a young man figuring out girls and then be blindsided by the film’s late shift into much grimmer material. Still, that vein of relatable comedy is what will get viewers through much of the film, and one of the reasons why Closely Watched Trains keeps an edge over the previous (and very similar) Best Foreign Language Academy Award-winner The Shop on Main Street, to which it’s often and appropriately paired.