Review of Closely Watched Trains

The film "Watch the train" (Dutch title) tells the story of Milos, a young points-man, in Czlechoslovakia during the German occupation in the Second World War. The film combines a mild humor with a sketch of the Nazi's cruelty and stupidity. Milos starts to work in the railway station of his local village. He is hardly full-grown, and his personality is still fragile. His basic pre-occupation, and a source of self-doubt, is the opposite sex. His sexual performance becomes an existential problem for him, and even induces a suicide attempt, after an unsuccessful intercourse with his girlfriend, a train guard. Eventually the niece of a colleague helps him to overcome his fears. As such the narrative is rather thin. The real charm of the film is in the detail, int the little events, that accompany this main story. The stationmaster, who suffers under his dominant wife. The frivolous colleague of Milos. The apathetic German soldiers, who find comfort in a railway wagon filled with nurses. The photographer, who bursts into a gale of laughter, after his house is demolished by an air raid. And the crooked regional inspector, who is a dedicated but stupid and insensible supporter of Hitler and the army of occupation. In the wake of his successful intercourse, which proves his manhood, Milos sabotages and destroys a train filled with ammunition. Unfortunately this second success in his young life leads at the same time to his own destruction. On a higher level I don't know what to think of this narrative. It is not an invitation to reflect. Neither is it a tale of heroism, or a portrayal of existential emptiness. The events just unfold, as if by accident, and could just as well have taken a different turn. It brings some reminiscences of the Russian film Ballad of a Soldier, which in my opinion is a better appeal to our emotions. Both films probably simply mean to sketch the waste of promising lives as a result of the stupidity of war. It is probably this aspect of the possibilities for a happy future, which shows their Bolshevist background.