Closely Watched Trains

The first feature from the 28-year-old Czech filmmaker Menzel is a comic, humanistic look at a teenage railway trainee, Milos (Neckar), who is sent off to a desolate station in Bohemia during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Hidden away from much of the rest of the world, Milos and the very ordinary characters who pass through the station try to live as if they were not caught in the midst of WWII. Milos learns his trade with relative ease, working under the experienced guidance of dispatcher Hubicka (Somr). A bored womanizer, Hubicka also becomes the uneasy boy's mentor in the ways of the world, which are all too quickly being thrust upon him. During the cou...