Jiri Menzel's 1966 film Closely Watched Trains, with its plot following the daily routine of a young slacker and its extremely languid, at first glance, pace seems to cast a lazily nostalgic glance towards World War II-era Czechoslovakia. However, at crucial moments in the narrative, the tone of the film shifts completely from placid comedy to melodrama. These unexpected shifts in tone reveal more about the world in which the film's characters live—a world shaped by the absurdly unpredictable and inconsistent dangers of wartime. Two scenes in particular reflect the chaos that characterized the life of Czechoslovakian civilians during the war: the air raid and the finale. These two scenes, which respectively give the plot its first major conflict and its climax, both feature juxtapositions of death and laughter during the most audiovisually intense moments. The ironic contrast between humor and pathos in these violent scenes might otherwise appear farcical if the effect of this contrast were to significantly alter, rather than suddenly deviate from, the film's steady tone. Instead, as isolated incidents, these scenes are quite jarring. They therefore effectively serve to remind the viewer that the atmosphere of the German occupation was characterized by unexpected tragedies that would or would not eclipse everyday struggles, without predictability. These quick thematic detours in Menzel's otherwise languid film highlight the randomness of wartime violence, violence whose unfocused nature leads to preserving (as in the collapsed house) or destroying (as in the ammunition train) lives without warning. Say no to plagiarism. . Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The film's action, or lack thereof, is largely centered 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 actual work, which is reflected filmically in his opening narration ("my only goal is to uphold the family tradition and do nothing", 4:17 -21) and in the numerous static shots of him gaping at the camera, staring flatly at the pleasures and misfortunes of others (8:53-58, 28:38-40, 37:16-28, etc. .). Despite his initial disinterest in doing anything active, let alone heroic, Milo ends up following a distorted 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 having fought first his own shortcomings (1:21:46-1:22:13, 1:23:22-27) and then an enemy external (1:30: 43-55). Milo's role as an understated 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 like a modern update of Josef Vejk, a well-known everyman character with whom he shares a proud tendency to shirk work as a way to passively resist an inhuman army, while still profiting from the honorable status granted wearing the uniform (Hames).As an everyman, Milo is certainly a useful stand-in for the audience to show how the Second World War affected regular Czechoslovakian citizens. Almost everyone in the film shares his propensity for voyeurism: although this trait is primarily used for embarrassing and occasionally humorous depictions of the male gaze (13:11-18, 58:27-45), activities of indiscretion andobservation of people. with enthusiasm from both young (40:55-41:05) and older (55:36-55:57) women. In the world of Menzel's film, all the Czechs present at the station are united by an interest in observing things from afar, so the character whose job is literally "guardian" can be clearly defined as their representative figure. Milo's repressed ability to participate in partisan activities may therefore be indicative of the way in which the majority of Czechoslovakian citizens approached the war. It was something to be observed without interfering, since the Nazis had so effectively negated the Czechoslovak resistance movements, beginning with the student massacre in Prague in 1939, and wiping them out completely in 1942 with reprisals for the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich (Mastn) . When Milo finally interferes in the conflict, he does so from a remarkably static position: after dropping (not throwing) a bomb on a major German munitions train, he spends his final moments hiding in a portal watching the fast-moving train. away from him (1:30:05, 1:30:25). His death from machine gun fire comes suddenly and unexpectedly, as the gunner's appearance on screen is preceded by a hypnotic movement of the train that leads the audience to believe that Milo could almost have pulled off this sabotage safely (1:30: 25-40). The explosion is seen later by his girlfriend when the train has already traveled beyond the horizon (1:31:39-44). This course of action suggests that the only way an everyman like Milo could have resisted Nazi power would have been through indirect actions and at great personal cost, which could neither be foreseen nor avoided. Such was the danger of living in an occupied country in the early 1940s. Regardless of whether or not the Czech and Slovak peoples chose to interact with their occupiers, the war would inevitably come to them, in unpredictable and unseemly ways. The film shows this by drawing attention to the strange ways in which the train station idyll is unexpectedly and bizarrely disrupted. from the war that was happening around them. In the scene that has the greatest transformative effect on his character, Milo fails to consummate his love for Ma, thus setting in motion his suicide attempt and his eventual heroism (43:20-44:36). He goes to sleep separately from her, and wakes up to find that the house they both slept in has been destroyed by an air raid (44:36-45:53). The randomness of this sudden violence is communicated to the audience with a quick cut to the mural of the plane in the house's photography studio (44:54) and another to Ma's uncle sitting on the bed, laughing in the rubble, surprised to be unharmed (45:38-45). Both shots suggest that the actions of war come to the train station employees as some sort of mysterious coincidence. The sight of a cartoon-style painted plane accompanying the sounds of an air raid siren, airplane engines, and falling bombs is a fun and scary juxtaposition that makes the whole attack seem rather dreamlike. The implication here is that for Czechoslovaks far from the front, the war was real enough to destroy the country's infrastructure, but unreal enough to leave them personally unscathed, since their cities were not sites of battles or deportations. In a twist of dark humor, it is the embarrassment of failed sex, rather than the imminent danger of explosives, that sends Milo to his death. This provides a thematic counterpoint to the final scene, suggesting that individual concerns may indeed have).