I SERVED THE
KING OF ENGLAND
aka OBSLUHOVAL JSEM ANGLICKEHO KRALE
Year: 2006
USA: Sony Pictures Classics
UK: Arrow Film Distributors
Cast: Ivan Barnev, Oldrich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch, Martin Huba, Marian Labuda, Milan Lasica, Josef Abrham, Jiri Labus, Jaromir Dulava, Zuzana Fialova, Rudolf Hrušinsk�, Pavel Nov�, Jaromir Dulava, �arka Petru�elova, Tonya Graves, Jiri �estak
Director: Jiri Menezel
Countries: Czech Republic / Slovakia
Language: Czech (English subtitles)
USA: 118 mins
UK: 120 mins
USA Rated: R for sexual content and nudity
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong sex, sexualised nudity and one bloody image
USA Release Date: 29 August 2008 (Limited Release - New York and Los Angeles)
UK Release Date: 9 May 2008 (Limited Release)
US Distributor
Synopsis
Jan Dite (Ivan Barnev) is short in height, but high in ambition. To put it bluntly, the young provincial waiter wants to become a millionaire. And he knows just how to do it: by hearing everything, seeing everything, and creating opportunities at every turn.
Armed with this knowledge and an irrepressible wish to please, he soon leaves his first place of employment, a pub, for a luxury brothel and, finally moving onto an elegant Art Nouveau Prague restaurant. But by the late 1930s, things are changing: Hitler has taken the Sudetenland region and is breaking apart Czechoslovakia.
Jan falls in love with Liza (Julia Jentsch), a Sudeten German proud of her Aryan blood. They marry, and soon after Liza is sent to serve on the Polish front, while Jan remains behind to serve as a nurse in a Nazi SS Research Hospital, but when she returns, she has a fortune in rare stamps that Jews had 'left behind' ...
After Liza's less than heroic death, Jan sells the stamps and becomes ... a millionaire. But he only has three years to enjoy his fortune: the new Communist regime puts him behind bars for 15 years, one for each of his millions...
Upon his release from jail, Jan is sent to live in a decrepit border town. Here Jan reflects on the events that have shaped his life - and to reflect on what might have happened if he had played a different role in these events.
