PhilPaine.com

It’s been fif­teen years since I’ve seen Miloš For­man’s satir­i­cal mas­ter­piece. I found it even more plea­sur­able on sec­ond view­ing. Filmed with an ama­teur cast of real fire­men, in a small North Bohemi­an town, the film con­tains absolute­ly noth­ing overt­ly polit­i­cal. But it’s atti­tude was sub­tly sub­ver­sive in a way that enraged the rul­ing Com­mu­nists, who declared it “banned for­ev­er”, and even threat­ened For­man with ten years impris­on­ment for “dam­age to the state”. For­man was in Paris when the Sovi­ets invad­ed, short­ly after, so he defect­ed and became a pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. He sub­se­quent­ly had a dis­tin­guished direct­ing career, with films such as One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest and Amadeus. But none of these block­busters can equal the vital­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty of this ear­ly effort. It’s dif­fi­cult to explain why this sim­ple, episod­ic piece of nat­u­ral­ism is so effec­tive. You just have to watch it. There are so many scenes where the com­e­dy emerges painful­ly from plain real­i­ty, such as when the cam­era scans the bored expres­sions of the girls being parad­ed before the aging judges in a ludi­crous beau­ty con­test, the bril­liant­ly timed sequence when it’s dis­cov­ered that all the raf­fle prizes have been stolen, or the fire­men mov­ing a crotch­ety old man clos­er to his burn­ing home to keep him warm. This is not bit­ter or accus­ing satire. In fact, the film’s approach is ten­der and for­giv­ing. And per­haps that is what infu­ri­at­ed the cor­rupt Com­mu­nist oli­garchs most of all.