Jan Svankmejar
The Collected Shorts - Volume 2
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Other Jan Svankmajer DVDs
Dimensions of Dialogue
A totally brilliant surrealist symbolic triptych about the nature of dialogues and the risks of communication. First part features Archimboloesque heads on a wooden plank background. Heads are made out of different materials and eat each other. The cooking utensil head mashes up the vegetable head and regurgitates it in smaller, less distinct pieces. The writing head eats the cooking head. Vegetable head eats writing head (a little rochambeauy). Natural and mechanical and intellectual battle it out in classic dialectic fashion until a human head emerges. Second features man and woman who melt together in sexual bliss and, when separated again, find there is some small foreign thing between them. They each
deny ownership and start fighting, their tear each other into the same indistinguishable mass they were in when so intimately entwined. Final part features two men spitting out complimentary items – shoe and shoelace, butter and bread, pencil and sharpener and so on. As the dialogue continues, items mismatch to humorous effect. A perfect balance between surreal imagery and underlying symbolic understanding of human dynamics. It is what all surrealism strives for, a balanced blend between the ridiculous and the sublime, paralyzing the rational long enough to sneak the unnameable through, tapping into the subconscious directly. My favorite Svankmejar film.
Down the Cellar
A little girl in Heidi braids has to go down to the world’s creepiest cellar to get some potatoes. On her way, she is followed by a black cat. Once there, she sees an old man tucking himself into a bed of coal and an old woman baking coal biscuits, as well as ravenous shoes that fight over her bun. They both entreat her to come in, but she runs away. She finally makes it to her potato bin, but the taters keep rolling out of her basket and returning to the bin. Finally, she gets a big bag full, locks the cellar, and heads back towards the stairs. She’s followed by a (giant?) black cat and then trips on the stairs and drops the basket and the taters run home again. Poor girl sits on the
steps a moment, then returns to the cellar. Dark and foreboding and dread-full, but not one of his better works.
The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope
A straight reading of Poe’s iconic story. Black and white and not ver interesting. Typically claustrophobic, but brings nothing new to the story.
Meat Love
Two steaks frolic briefly in a kitchen – dancing, playfully tossing flour on each other – until tragedy strikes and they are fried. Yum. A surrealist one-liner ("a fur-covered sewing machine walks into a bar..."). Commissioned by MTV.
Flora
An Archimboloesque figure is strapped to a hospital bed while his vegetable body rots and is eaten by maggots. Super short (20 seconds) dark ecological tragedy, the rape and pillaging of nature. Commissioned by MTV.
The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia
A no doubt rich and biting satire of Eastern European politics since the death of Stalin, but the specific critiques are beyond me, knowing nothing about recent world political history (being a good American). A Stalin staute is operated upon and a new bust comes out, to the sound sof a baby crying. A variation on the plus ca change motif, with specific cultural references. I’m sure this slays them in the Czech Republic.
Food
Three surrealist meals. Breakfast is two guys in a room – one the diner, the other a food dispensing machine. Diner has to poke and prod the other to get it to bring a sausage up through the dumbwaiter of his chest. After eating, the diner becomes the dispenser and the former dispenser gets up and leaves. A huge line stretches out, people waiting to eat and be eaten. For lunch, two guys – one in a suit, the other sheepishly floppy – can’t get the attention of the waiter, so they eat everything on the table. Then they eat the table. The business guy eats the slacker. For dinner, a man in a fancy restaurant adds tons of condiments to his unseen meal. Eventually, it is revealed that he’s eating his own arm. Other diners eat
their own body parts. Very well done. Nice clay heads modeled after real heads. Somewhat visually disgusting. No doubt a parable about the cannibalism of the class structure or the nature of oppression or the plight of the powerless or something. Does for food what Dimensions of Dialogue does for communication.
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copyright 2008 Christopher Earl