Last night in my Images of Fascism class I showed my students one of my favorite movies: Jiri Menzel's 1966 film Closely Watched Trains. It was the decidedly deserving recipient of an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, and is based on a Bohumil Hrabel novella. Milos (Vaclav Neckar) and Hubicka (Josef Somr) do most of the work at a sleepy train depot in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, and get involved with a plot to blow up an ammunition train, although the younger, and dreadfully inexperienced and clumsy Milos, spends most of his time hoping to get laid. Mainly I wanted my students to think about the notion that anybody can be a hero, no matter how unlikely, which seems like a perfect lead-in to Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which we're starting next week. This film is required viewing.
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