The novel The Joke (1967), whose story treads a fine line between the tragic and the grotesque, is to this day a masterpiece of Czech prose examining weighty socio-critical and existential subject matter. This also applies to its cinematic adaptation of the same name: here the director employs a series of associative edits, pervasive shot compositions and resourceful counterpoints of image and sound which together achieve a similar effect to that attained by Milan Kundera in his use of modernist narrative approaches. Crowded out by the protagonist’s persistent memories, the present-time action is increasingly supplanted by scenes from the past when he, Ludvík Jahn, was a victim of the grim Stalinist regime. His deformed life holds up a mirror to the countless destinies of unjustly persecuted individuals.