Following 15 long years of incarceration, Jan
Dítě (Ivan Barnev), is released into a world very different
from what he left. On his way back home he recalls his early
years as an apprentice waiter, his knack for making money,
and his first sexual experiences. Apart from his first
lessons in waiting and lovemaking, he is lured by success
and becomes blinded by his dreams of fabulous wealth. Living
by his wits and skill, the young Jan becomes so successful
that small town jealousy soon forces him to move elsewhere.
He finds work at a luxury hotel near the capital where the
créme de la créme of 1930s Czech society come to live it up.
He is fascinated by their self-indulgent, carefree
existence. For a young man of his background the lifestyle
of these rich young folk seems quite unimaginable – which
makes it all the more enticing. So he sets himself a goal:
to get rich and live like them.
The older Jan is reminded of the easy sexual conquests of
his youth when he
finds himself attracted to Marcela, a young woman who
happens to come into his
orbit and intrudes on his solitude. But young Jan has to
quit the luxury hotel,
too. Hoping to become a wealthy and successful hotelier, he
takes a job in an
elegant art nouveau establishment in Prague. Here he learns
how a classy waiter
should dress and behave; and it is here he has his greatest
moment of glory.
The Emperor of Abyssinia visits the hotel, and Dítě is
decorated for his excellent
(though brief) service. Naturally, this results in more
jealousy.
The events following the Munich Agreement just before the
war mark a turning
point in Jan’s life. Having fallen in love with Líza (Julia
Jentsch), a young Sudeten
German activist, he suddenly finds himself on the wrong side
– an unwitting
collaborator with the forces that have invaded
Czechoslovakia. He marries Líza,
though not before undergoing a degrading examination to
ensure he is of good
Aryan stock. While his own country is being humiliated and
his compatriots
imprisoned and executed, he celebrates his marriage to a
fanatic German
nationalist. Soon he is working for the Germans.
War breaks out. The Germans invade Poland and Líza decides
to serve as a
volunteer nurse. Her young husband now works for an
institute set up by
Himmler to produce master race specimens from German girls
and full-blooded
Aryan warriors. It is an unbelievable place, where the new
Teutonic breed is
conceived, born, and reared under ‘expert’ supervision.
There Jan works
obediently as a nurse. Líza returns from Poland with a
priceless stamp collection
– her ‘war booty’ – and the couple look forward to building
a magnificent hotel
when the war is over. But the war does not end in the way
they imagined, and
as it drags on, the SS ‘research institute’ is turned into a
military hospital, where
both Jan and Líza work. As the war draws to a close, Líza is
killed in an air raid
and Jan faces prosecution as a Nazi collaborator.
After serving time for assisting the Nazi’s, the older Jan
finds peace and
reconciliation in the solitude of the south Bohemian
mountains. Only now does
he understand where he went wrong: he was simply too eager
to succeed, and
too eager to please.
© Sony Pictures
Classics. All
rights reserved
MORE MOVIE REVIEWS
>>>
Submit Your Movie Review
