As I looked around the cinema before the screening of I Served the King of England, I discovered I was the only female in the room. Some might find enough reason for the audience being predominantly male in the fact that this multi-award-winning Czech film features lots of female nudity – but zero male frontal nakedness. Director-scriptwriter Jiri Menzel’s latest offering also is told very much from the perspective of a man: specifically, a colourful character by the name of Jan Dite, superbly played as a young adult by Ivan Barnev and as an older fellow by Oldrich Kaiser.
I Served the King of England devotes a significant amount of time to depicting what bright-eyed Jan sees, hears and does in the capacity of waiter at various establishments, including a luxury hotel out in the country that functions like a high-class brothel and a leading restaurant in Prague whose very knowledgeable, multi-lingual maitre d’, Skrivanek (Martin Huba), explains his prowess to Jan by stating that “I served the king of England”. But this film adaptation of a novel by the late Bohumi Hrabal actually begins with an older, wearier Jan being released from a ‘correctional facility’ after completing a sentence of close to 15 years’ incarceration by the communists when they came to power in Czechoslovakia.
In a voiceover early in the movie, Jan says, “It was always my luck to run into bad luck” and “My whole life, I aspired to be nothing more than a millionaire.” As his story unfolds, however, the viewer is inclined to conclude that Jan made his own luck – bad along with good. Also, given his propensity to throw away loose change for the sheer entertainment of seeing people scramble about on their knees to pick up a few coins, it’s a wonder he actually managed to be as financially successful as he was at certain points in his life.
Short in stature, Jan attracts a similar small-sized patron in Walden (Martin Labuda), a travelling salesman with a beatific smile, who tells the younger man that “Money can lay the world at your feet” and “If you succeed, life can be beautiful.” But while his connection with Walden helps him quite a bit, it’s difficult to see the good in the relationship that blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jan cultivates with Liza (Julia Jentsch), a short and stocky German fräulein who wholeheartedly embraces Nazi beliefs, notably those concerning Aryan superiority, besides the fact it allows him to survive the Second World War relatively unscathed.
With an overall storyline that sees its protagonist live through eventful times and accumulate some very interesting experiences, I Served the King of England has somewhat understandably attracted comparisons to Forrest Gump (1994). For my part, however, there are quite a few salient differences between this European film and the Hollywood hit. In particular, there is a lot more dark humour and edge to this fantastical tale whose protagonist is also a lot cleverer, even if often just as unwise. Oh, and quite a bit more sex and beer – both of which are very lovingly lensed indeed.

Yvonne Teh