Jára Cimrman Lying (1983)

Original title

Jára Cimrman ležící, spící

Directed by

Ladislav Smoljak

Genre

comedy film, biographical film

Country

Czechoslovakia

Runtime

1h 21m

Rating

8.1 of 10 from 19 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This comedy is a fake biography of a fictional Czech hero. It follows his supposed adventures across Europe as he interacts with historical figures and tries to undermine the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

playfulwhimsicalmock-seriouslightheartednostalgicdeadpaninventiveepisodic

What happens

Jára Cimrman Lying, Sleeping (Czech: Jára Cimrman ležící, spící) is a 1983 Czechoslovak comedy film directed by Ladislav Smoljak. It is a biopic of the fictional Czech national hero Jára Cimrman, who is portrayed by one of his inventors, Zdeněk Svěrák. The story is framed by an excursion to Liptákov, the (fictional) village where Cimrman allegedly spent the final years of his life. The retrospective passages, which make up most of the film, span Cimrman's whole "known" life, where he interacts with many personalities of Czech and European science and culture in the Belle Époque. A large portion of the film deals with Cimrman's acting as a tutor in the family of Franz Ferdinand d'Este, the heir presumptive of Austria-Hungary. In this role Cimrman is secretly aiming to "split the monarchy". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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