Plot summary
Francin, manager of a small-town brewery, has a charming wife whose abundant blonde locks are an adornment to the town. Maryska looks ethereal but loves meat and beer, while Francin is an ascetic. The strict members of the brewery board of directors come to audit the accounts, but are diverted from concentrating on Francin's detailed reports by Maryska, who has organized a pig-killing feast and is ably assisting the butcher. When she invites the old curmudgeons on the board to enjoy the fresh pork, they are too happy to agree. Francin doesn't know whether he is going to get a permanent contract. To make things worse his brother Pepin - eccentric, noisy and garrulous - turns up on an indefinite visit.
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Top cast
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Absolute gem
Czech, Czech-er, Czech-est
My god, is this film ever Czech Czech Czech. It's charming, warm-hearted, humble, sensual, and occasionally brutal. Like so many other Czech films, here we see humans being human, and their ridiculousness is viewed with affection and delight.
As Fellini's "Amacord" captured the Italy of the director's childhood, Menzel's "Postriziny" reminisces about life at a rural Czech brewery in the 1920s. But Menzel's film drifts through daily life with only the most minor of events, and the plot, such as it is, is guided by nothing of consequence at all. This film floats by so lightly that, in comparison, it makes "Amacord" seem as epic as a Hollywood superhero blockbuster.
The wife is lovely. The husband is loving and dutiful. The brother is an annoying clown, but everyone enjoys him. Nothing terribly bad happens.
The film is kind of a marvel of understatement, or disengagement. One can only wonder why everything feels so inconsequential. Was it fear of the censors? Or Menzel's desire to be always charming, at any cost? Or, is Menzel radically humble, bordering on being humble-to-a-fault? Or, is the average movie viewer simply unprepared to take on a film in which the stakes are so low?