Review of Closely Watched Trains

An odd little film from the Czech Republic focusing on a young man’s appointment at a rail station and his experiences there during the Nazi occupation.

From first impressions the film appears to be a comedy, albeit a black one. Milos tells us of his doomed forefathers and the amusing ways they met their demise; and this is followed by his first interactions with the somewhat motley crew that populate the station. He is clearly a fish out of water but he’s keen to do well and become a man.
His sweet relationship with a young woman is convincing and heartfelt, but things take a much darker turn when he cannot perform sexually and he tries to take his own life shown in quite a graphic way for the time and the genre. From then the story loses interest and falls into such sentimentality and ribaldry that by the end I had switched off didn’t feel like I cared.

Having said that there is stuff to enjoy here as the acting is delicately nuanced and the film is shot with what seems like an uncertainty between documentary and fiction which gives it visual charm. It’s just a shame that the narrative loses its way.