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| Bolek Polívka in Calamity |
Cast: Bolek Polívka. Dagmar Bláhovká, Jana Synková, Marie Pavliková, Jaroslava Kretschmarová, Zdenek Sverák. Screenplay: Vera Chytilová, Josef Silhavy. Cinematography: Ivan Slapeta. Production design: Bohumil Pokorny. Film editing: Jirí Brozek. Music: Laco Deczi.
Vera Chytilová's Calamity is a loosey-goosey comedy about the misadventures of Honza Dostál (Bolek Polívka), a college dropout who has decided he wants to drive a train. And so he does eventually, while dealing with the advances of several young women. The lanky but agreeable Honza is nobody's idea of a hunk, but perhaps there was a shortage of available young men in 1980s Czechoslovakia. Eventually, the film stops being a collection of occasionally funny incidents and focuses on the titular calamity: The train Honza is driving gets buried in snow, and the movie centers on the reactions of the passengers, including several of his girlfriends, to their predicament. Chytilová, whose career had suffered after the Soviets cracked down on sassy Czech filmmakers, manages to insert some sly digs at the government bureaucracy but they lack the bite of her earlier films. It's a benign, amusing movie with one or two laugh-out-loud moments.
