a couple of reviewers have complained about the lack of accuracy and/or authenticity. I prefer to disregard those aspects and accept the movie as a style piece, a work of highly stylized history which is nevertheless useful for people like my American wife who knew nothing about Masaryk, the annexation of Sudetenland and the rest. Viewed through this prism, A Prominent Patient is a fine movie. Great acting, editing and camera work and fantastic music throughout. I enter a movie theater to be entertained or moved. I was both during this film.
5 Reviews
Great historical movie about great man and bad times
Michal-pust20 March 2017
Jan Masaryk, son of our Czechoslovakian father, Tomas Garrigue, was great man whose death is still surrounded by mystery. This movie presents how he and our President,Edvard Benes (Oldrich Kaiser), were handling politics when our country was still young and our allies, Britain and France, were slowly deciding to "sell" us to Hitler's Germany for European peace. Movie itself is masterpiece and I am saying this as person that is not fan of our own Czech production. Great authenticity is achieved by not translating all dialogues to Czech but only those set in Czechoslovakia. Both Roden and Kaiser did a great job playing their main roles and there was not a single weak act in whole movie. International cast is chosen perfectly. But even for person who knows history of our country well, it is hard to realize, where exactly in real history time line are which moments set. 12 awards from 15 nominations of Czech Lion Awards (Highest movie awards in Czech republic) speaks for itself.
Stray pack of the Czech Lions
GrimmEF27 March 2017
Picture about a kind-hearted, jolly man with a complicated soul. Such a movie would Jan Masaryk deserve, unfortunately, he did not get. Not even a pack of twelve Czech Lions means that Julius Sevcik's rendering of the Masaryk's story is extraordinary.
The only thing which cannot be denied to this film is rather decent cinematography. However, it is necessary to add that either the rest of the pictures participating in the competition for the Czech Lion Awards are, as for photography, not poor at all. Nevertheless, the academics decided to award Masaryk and their choice is basically above reproach. It is also not possible to more seriously object to awarding Masaryk for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Stage Design, Sound, Music, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling and nor for Film Editing to some extent. Because none of that was utterly bad.
Worse is the case of awarding the film for Best Director and Screenplay. The thing is that even a relatively observant and well-educated viewer can have an issue with understanding frequent switching from one time line to another. Authors also place incomprehensibly great emphasis on scenes in which, in fact, nothing important is happening and only music is creating a semblance of action in them. Moreover, some of them are overly long.
Really odd is the fact that the Czech Lion Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role has been given to Karel Roden. No matter how absolutely great he was in his other roles, in this case he can definitely not dazzle any viewer who knows at least something about Jan Masaryk, saw him on photos or heard him speak. Roden's performance cannot even convince such a viewer that he is watching Jan Masaryk on the screen and not just a disguised actor. Viktor Fischl, who had the honour to work by the side of Jan Masaryk on the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs in London during WWII, wrote this in his book about him: 'barely to find a person who would be more kind to anyone he met. His smiling joviality could persuade every man after the first ten minutes that he may call Masaryk just Jan and consider him to be a friend for life and death.' However, it seems as if Roden's portrayal of Jan Masaryk is lacking this kindness and joviality and the actor replaced it with bitterness and some kind of timidness instead. Of course, Jan Masaryk was a complicated personality, which was torn in its own way, but somehow differently torn than Roden's character. It is really a great pity that a film about a Czech history figure did not totally manage to depict this figure.
It is hard to say whether there is to blame only the actor for the way of the portrayal of the leading character, because also the director and screenplay have a huge influence on that. Exactly this trio creates an impression of the whole film. An impression which is somehow wishy-washy, mainly because of the fact that the plot of the film is ending already during the Second World War. The rest of the life of Jan Masaryk is set on the screen in just a few sentences of the plain text before the ending credits. The story is basically lacking both the background and the end. Yet this all is being replaced with the scenes of Jan Masaryk dancing and making love which probably according to the authors represent important and from the picture uncuttable part of the life story of Tomá Garrigue Masaryk's son. Who would care about Jan Masaryk's childhood, path to maturity, development of the relationship to his father, realization of the duty to fatherland and dealing with the post war situation, while instead of that he can watch Karel Roden wiggling to the sound of saxophone.
The authors of Masaryk shot a movie that the viewers want to watch, which is also reflected in the number of the Czech Lion Awards it has been given. There is also an award for the Best film among them. At the end of the projection my eyes watered. Not because I was so deeply moved neither because of the realization how much the authors managed to bungle this story. It was because I was really sad, that nobody in the Czech republic is able to shoot beautiful, kind, but yet not glamorizing film about Czech history. A film which will not concentrate on the things which the viewer needs, but what needs and deserves our fatherland.
The only thing which cannot be denied to this film is rather decent cinematography. However, it is necessary to add that either the rest of the pictures participating in the competition for the Czech Lion Awards are, as for photography, not poor at all. Nevertheless, the academics decided to award Masaryk and their choice is basically above reproach. It is also not possible to more seriously object to awarding Masaryk for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Stage Design, Sound, Music, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling and nor for Film Editing to some extent. Because none of that was utterly bad.
Worse is the case of awarding the film for Best Director and Screenplay. The thing is that even a relatively observant and well-educated viewer can have an issue with understanding frequent switching from one time line to another. Authors also place incomprehensibly great emphasis on scenes in which, in fact, nothing important is happening and only music is creating a semblance of action in them. Moreover, some of them are overly long.
Really odd is the fact that the Czech Lion Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role has been given to Karel Roden. No matter how absolutely great he was in his other roles, in this case he can definitely not dazzle any viewer who knows at least something about Jan Masaryk, saw him on photos or heard him speak. Roden's performance cannot even convince such a viewer that he is watching Jan Masaryk on the screen and not just a disguised actor. Viktor Fischl, who had the honour to work by the side of Jan Masaryk on the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs in London during WWII, wrote this in his book about him: 'barely to find a person who would be more kind to anyone he met. His smiling joviality could persuade every man after the first ten minutes that he may call Masaryk just Jan and consider him to be a friend for life and death.' However, it seems as if Roden's portrayal of Jan Masaryk is lacking this kindness and joviality and the actor replaced it with bitterness and some kind of timidness instead. Of course, Jan Masaryk was a complicated personality, which was torn in its own way, but somehow differently torn than Roden's character. It is really a great pity that a film about a Czech history figure did not totally manage to depict this figure.
It is hard to say whether there is to blame only the actor for the way of the portrayal of the leading character, because also the director and screenplay have a huge influence on that. Exactly this trio creates an impression of the whole film. An impression which is somehow wishy-washy, mainly because of the fact that the plot of the film is ending already during the Second World War. The rest of the life of Jan Masaryk is set on the screen in just a few sentences of the plain text before the ending credits. The story is basically lacking both the background and the end. Yet this all is being replaced with the scenes of Jan Masaryk dancing and making love which probably according to the authors represent important and from the picture uncuttable part of the life story of Tomá Garrigue Masaryk's son. Who would care about Jan Masaryk's childhood, path to maturity, development of the relationship to his father, realization of the duty to fatherland and dealing with the post war situation, while instead of that he can watch Karel Roden wiggling to the sound of saxophone.
The authors of Masaryk shot a movie that the viewers want to watch, which is also reflected in the number of the Czech Lion Awards it has been given. There is also an award for the Best film among them. At the end of the projection my eyes watered. Not because I was so deeply moved neither because of the realization how much the authors managed to bungle this story. It was because I was really sad, that nobody in the Czech republic is able to shoot beautiful, kind, but yet not glamorizing film about Czech history. A film which will not concentrate on the things which the viewer needs, but what needs and deserves our fatherland.
Excellent
peterhrvola25 November 2019
What a disorganized mess
Thomas0017 October 2017
I will not question the historical accuracy, it was surely well researched, and "adopted". But I do question the presentation - what a mess! Scenes are flashing back and forth in time, cultural conflicts, discontinuities, worthless encounters. The choice of languages, spoken versus subtitles, is unfortunate. The actors had strange accents and the subtitles were poor translations. Above all, why? Why would a Czech movie-maker use a purely Czech topic in purely Czech history, to make movie in Czech republic, using Czech resources, and then produce 90% of it in a language which Czechs do not understand? I am thinking that it was meant to impress the foreigners and ignore the Czechs, who might be calling out the falsehoods. The only reason I did not rate it "1" was because it is a great subject, now regrettably abused and more difficult to correct.
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