Jiri Menzel's 1966 film Closely Watched Trains, with its plot that follows the daily routine of a young slacker and its extremely languorous pace, seems at first glance take a lazily nostalgic look back at World War II. -Czechoslovakia era. However, during pivotal moments in the story, the tone of the film shifts entirely from placid comedy to melodrama. These unexpected tonal shifts reveal more about the world the film's characters live in, a world shaped by the absurdly unpredictable and inconsistent dangers of wartime. Two scenes in particular reflect the chaos that characterized the lives of Czechoslovak civilians during the war: the air raid and the finale. These two scenes which, respectively, give the plot its first main conflict and its climax both feature juxtapositions of death and laughter during their most audiovisually intense moments. The ironic contrast of humor and pathos in these violent scenes might otherwise appear ridiculous if the effect of this contrast were to alter significantly, rather than suddenly deviate from the consistent tone of the film. Instead, as isolated incidents, these scenes are rather shocking. They thus effectively serve to remind the viewer that the atmosphere of the German occupation was one of unforeseen tragedies which may or may not overshadow daily struggles, without predictability. These quick thematic detours in Menzel's otherwise languorous film highlight the randomness of wartime violence, a violence whose vague nature leads either to preservation (as in the collapsed house) or to destruction (as in the ammunition train) lives without warning. Say no to plagiarism. . Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The film's action, or lack thereof, is largely focused on the comedic foibles of its protagonist, young train dispatcher Milo Hrma. Milo is happy to sit back and move around the world without doing any real work, which is reflected filmically in his opening narration ("My only goal is to maintain the family tradition and do nothing" , 4:17-21) and in the many static shots of him gaping at the camera, staring at the pleasures and misfortunes of others (8:53-58, 28:38-40, 37:16-28, etc. .). Despite his initial disinterest in anything active, much less heroic, Milo ends up following a skewed version of the archetypal hero's journey, triggered by his desire to prove himself as a man (1:14:46-52 ), and ending with his transformation into a martyr (1:30:53-56) after first battling his own flaws (1:21:46-1:22:13, 1:23:22-27) and then an external enemy (1:30: 43-55). Milo's role as a quiet hero complements his shared perspective with the rest of the cast to identify his character as a sort of Czech everyman. He is perhaps something of a modern update of Josef Vejk, an ordinary character with whom he shares a proud tendency to evade work as a means of passively resisting an inhuman army, while enjoying the honorable status granted by wearing the uniform (Hames).As an ordinary man, Milo' is certainly a useful stand-in to show how World War II affected ordinary Czechoslovaks. Almost everyone in the film shares his propensity for voyeurism: although this trait is mainly used for awkward and sometimes humorous depictions of the male gaze (13:11-18, 58:27-45), prying eyes and people are also visiblyundertaken. enthusiastically by young (40:55-41:05) and older (55:36-55:57) women. In the world of Menzel's film, all the Czechs in the station are united by their interest in looking at things from afar, so that the character whose job is literally "guardian" can very clearly be defined as their representative figure. Milo's suppressed ability to participate in partisan activities may therefore be indicative of how the majority of Czechoslovak citizens approached the war. This was something to be observed without interference, since the Nazis had so effectively negated Czechoslovak resistance movements, beginning with a massacre of students in Prague in 1939, and wiping them out entirely in 1942 with reprisals for the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich (Mastn). When Milo finally intervenes in the conflict, he does so in a remarkably static manner: after dropping (not throwing) a bomb on a large German munitions train, he spends his final moments hiding on a gantry watching the train moving fast. away from him (1:30:05, 1:30:25). His death by machine gun fire occurs suddenly and unexpectedly, as the gunman's appearance on screen is preceded by a hypnotic movement of the train that makes the audience believe that Milo could almost have successfully carried out this sabotage (1 :30:25-40). The explosion is later seen by his girlfriend when the train has already passed the horizon (1:31:39-44). This course of action suggests that the only way an ordinary man like Milo could have resisted Nazi power would have been through indirect actions and at great personal cost, which could neither be anticipated nor avoided. Such was the danger of living in an occupied country in the early 1940s. Whether or not the Czech and Slovak people chose to interact with their occupiers, war would inevitably strike them in unpredictable and unseemly ways. The film shows this by drawing attention to the strange way in which the idyll of the station is disrupted in unexpected and bizarre ways. by the war going on all around them. In the scene that has the greatest transformative effect on his character, Milo fails to consummate his love for Ma, thus triggering his suicide attempt and eventual heroism (43:20-44:36). He falls asleep separately from her and wakes up to find that the house they were both sleeping in has been destroyed by an aerial bombardment (44:36-45:53). The randomness of this sudden violence is communicated to the audience through a quick cut to the mural of the plane in the house's photo studio (44:54) and another of Ma's uncle sitting in bed, laughing in the middle of the rubble, surprised to know that he is unharmed (45: 38-45). Both shots suggest that the actions of the war occur to the station employees as some kind of strange coincidence. The sight of a cartoonishly painted plane accompanying the sounds of an air raid siren, plane engines and falling bombs is a funny-scary juxtaposition that makes the whole attack seem rather dreamlike . The implication here is that for Czechoslovaks far from the front, the war was both real enough to destroy the country's infrastructure, but unreal enough to leave them personally unscathed, since their towns were not the scene of battles or deportations. In a touch of dark humor, it is the embarrassment of a failed sexual encounter, rather than the imminent danger of explosives, that sends Milo towards his death. This provides a thematic counterpoint to the final scene, suggesting that individual anxieties might actually have a greater influence on the fate of a Czechoslovak citizen than the threat of bullets or bombs when the effects of war).