Case Closed by Patrik Ouředník

By Bill Marx

The Arts Fuse, Jun 24, 2010

This shaggy-dog send-up of TV detective yarns doesn’t really pay much attention to its manifold crimes (sneaky goings on in a retirement home, decade old murders, a rape), let alone punishments. Ouředník openly disdains plot; instead, he serves up a zany cultural critique of contemporary Czech society, its endemic incompetence and corruption unfazed by any of the political changes, authoritarian subservience comfortably giving way to capitalist phoniness. The sort-of main character, a prickly retiree named Viktor Dyk, sports a misanthropic sense of humor that made me laugh out loud, particularly his penchant for making up quotations from the Bible: “The eyes of the dead lend their sparkle to the stars.” “Proverbs 8:125.”