![I Day: Screenplay [Part 4]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Bs0RNqnY4yY/ScdWJvje4UI/AAAAAAAAOmw/iYiBMru78yY/S150/ID41.jpg)
Story The hero of the film, Jan Dítě (John Child), is released from prison after many years. On his way back home he recalls his early years as an apprentice waiter, his knack for making money, and his first sexual experiences. Apart from his first lessons in waiting and love-making, he also learned to dream of success. He discovered the lure of wealth. He gained his first experience in a small border town where two ethnic groups used to live side by side in relative peace: Czechs and Germans.
All this passes through the mind of the older Child as he wanders round his new home on the frontier, round villages once inhabited by Germans but now deserted. After the war all ethnic Germans were driven out and the Czechoslovak government never managed to regenerate the area. This is only one of the motifs Hrabal touches on – one that today is as relevant as ever.
Living by his wits and skill, the young Child was so successful that small-town jealousy soon forced him to move elsewhere. He finds work at a luxury hotel near the capital where the créme de la créme of 1930s Czech society come to live it up. He is fascinated by their self-indulgent, carefree existence. For a young man of his background the lifestyle of these rich young folk seems quite unimaginable – which makes it all the more enticing. So he sets himself a goal: to get rich and live like them. This, too, might well be a theme that could strike a chord with modern audiences.
The older Child is reminded of the easy sexual conquests of his youth when he finds himself attracted to Marcela, a young woman who happens to come into his orbit and intrudes on his solitude.
But young Child has to quit the luxury hotel, too. Hoping to become a wealthy and successful hotelier, he takes a job in an elegant art nouveau establishment in Prague. Here he learns how a classy waiter should dress and behave; and it is here he has his greatest moment of glory. The Emperor of Abyssinia visits the hotel, and Child is decorated for his excellent (though brief) service. Naturally, this results in more jealousy.
The older Child, now alone in the world, is reminded of his former dexterity at the dinner-table as he prepares a meal for his temporary neighbors, Marcela and her boss (and possibly lover).
The events following the Munich Agreement just before the war mark a turning-point in Child’s life. Having fallen in love with Liza, a young Sudeten German activist, he suddenly finds himself on the wrong side – an unwitting collaborator with the forces that have invaded Czechoslovakia. He marries Liza, though not before undergoing a degrading examination to ensure he is of good Aryan stock. While his own country is being humiliated and his compatriots imprisoned and executed, he celebrates his marriage to a fanatic German nationalist. Soon he is working for the Germans.
The exploits of the young Child are constantly interwoven with the life of the old Man in his borderland mountain retreat. The Man’s neighbors, Marcela and her boss, move out. Realizing that all he can now look forward to is solitude, he takes stock of his life.
War breaks out. The Germans invade Poland and Liza decides to serve as a volunteer nurse. Her young husband now works for an institute set up by Himmler to produce master-race specimens from German girls and full-blooded Aryan warriors. It is an unbelievable place, where the new Teutonic breed is conceived, born, and reared under ‘expert’ supervision. Here Child works obediently as a nurse. Liza returns from Poland with a priceless stamp collection – her ‘war booty’ – and the couple look forward to building a magnificent hotel when the war is over.
But the war does not end in the way they imagined. In the meantime the SS ‘research institute’ has been turned into a military hospital, where they now both work. Liza is killed in an air raid in the last days of the war. Child faces prosecution as a Nazi collaborator.
The older Child finds peace and reconciliation in the solitude of the south Bohemian mountains. Only now does he understand where he went wrong: he was simply too eager to succeed, and too eager to please.
Such a bare outline of the plot cannot do justice to the sense of the grotesque and the poetic that pervades Hrabal’s text. As anyone who has ever read any of his novels or short stories will agree, his writing is always full of vitality and inspiration.
All this passes through the mind of the older Child as he wanders round his new home on the frontier, round villages once inhabited by Germans but now deserted. After the war all ethnic Germans were driven out and the Czechoslovak government never managed to regenerate the area. This is only one of the motifs Hrabal touches on – one that today is as relevant as ever.
Living by his wits and skill, the young Child was so successful that small-town jealousy soon forced him to move elsewhere. He finds work at a luxury hotel near the capital where the créme de la créme of 1930s Czech society come to live it up. He is fascinated by their self-indulgent, carefree existence. For a young man of his background the lifestyle of these rich young folk seems quite unimaginable – which makes it all the more enticing. So he sets himself a goal: to get rich and live like them. This, too, might well be a theme that could strike a chord with modern audiences.
The older Child is reminded of the easy sexual conquests of his youth when he finds himself attracted to Marcela, a young woman who happens to come into his orbit and intrudes on his solitude.
But young Child has to quit the luxury hotel, too. Hoping to become a wealthy and successful hotelier, he takes a job in an elegant art nouveau establishment in Prague. Here he learns how a classy waiter should dress and behave; and it is here he has his greatest moment of glory. The Emperor of Abyssinia visits the hotel, and Child is decorated for his excellent (though brief) service. Naturally, this results in more jealousy.
The older Child, now alone in the world, is reminded of his former dexterity at the dinner-table as he prepares a meal for his temporary neighbors, Marcela and her boss (and possibly lover).
The events following the Munich Agreement just before the war mark a turning-point in Child’s life. Having fallen in love with Liza, a young Sudeten German activist, he suddenly finds himself on the wrong side – an unwitting collaborator with the forces that have invaded Czechoslovakia. He marries Liza, though not before undergoing a degrading examination to ensure he is of good Aryan stock. While his own country is being humiliated and his compatriots imprisoned and executed, he celebrates his marriage to a fanatic German nationalist. Soon he is working for the Germans.
The exploits of the young Child are constantly interwoven with the life of the old Man in his borderland mountain retreat. The Man’s neighbors, Marcela and her boss, move out. Realizing that all he can now look forward to is solitude, he takes stock of his life.
War breaks out. The Germans invade Poland and Liza decides to serve as a volunteer nurse. Her young husband now works for an institute set up by Himmler to produce master-race specimens from German girls and full-blooded Aryan warriors. It is an unbelievable place, where the new Teutonic breed is conceived, born, and reared under ‘expert’ supervision. Here Child works obediently as a nurse. Liza returns from Poland with a priceless stamp collection – her ‘war booty’ – and the couple look forward to building a magnificent hotel when the war is over.
But the war does not end in the way they imagined. In the meantime the SS ‘research institute’ has been turned into a military hospital, where they now both work. Liza is killed in an air raid in the last days of the war. Child faces prosecution as a Nazi collaborator.
The older Child finds peace and reconciliation in the solitude of the south Bohemian mountains. Only now does he understand where he went wrong: he was simply too eager to succeed, and too eager to please.
Such a bare outline of the plot cannot do justice to the sense of the grotesque and the poetic that pervades Hrabal’s text. As anyone who has ever read any of his novels or short stories will agree, his writing is always full of vitality and inspiration.
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