This is the only film that makes me salivate. Yes, for a glass of Czech beer, a plate of pork and the beautiful Magda Vááryová. It's a fond look at the lives of writer Bohumil Hrabal's parents in pre-war Czechoslovakia — father a put-upon brewery manager, mother sensual and flirtatious — and his eccentric, vejk-like Uncle Pepin, who arrives uninvited and doesn't leave.
There's a lot of smiling and larking about, in and around the small-town brewery that was their home, and even those suffering injuries as a result seem to laugh at them. Utopian and nostalgic maybe, but why not? Nowadays we'd call it "feelgood". And that horse pissing — unscripted, surely (!) but the actors cope and director Jiří Menzel leaves it in to add to the mayhem.
I read the book years ago, but didn't realise until much later that Menzel had filmed it: what joy! Hrabal's breathless prose style is probably impossible to capture on screen, but the essence of the short story is not. In Menzel's loving hands the result is such a beautiful film, tender, whimsical, joyful, sensual, life-enhancing. I'd say that Postřiiny is definitely on a par with his better-known Ostře Sledované Vlaky (Closely Observed Trains), perhaps even superior as it benefits from more modern production quality, and colour. Such a shame it is not better known in the west — definitely our loss! But the Czech DVD has fairly good English subtitles for those unfortunates like myself who cannot speak the language, so now there is no excuse for not seeking out this gem.
Incidentally, Hrabal grew up in the brewery at Nymburk, east of Prague, but the film was actually shot at the Daleice brewery further south in Moravia. Was the chimney there as tall, I wonder...?
