|
home > films
>
 OTESANEK
(2001)
(Little Otik)
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Bozena - Veronika Zilkova
Karel - Jan Hartl
Alzbetka - Kristina Adamcova
Her mother - Jaroslava Kretschmerova
Her father - Pavel Novy
This is Svankmejer’s fourth feature film to date (though to include
his shorter pieces the number is closer to thirty – many of which
remain banned inside of his own country) and those familiar with the Czech
arch-surrealists work will know what to expect.
In Otesánek, which is based on an Eastern European fairy
tale, a childless and hopelessly infertile couple, Karel and Bozena buy
a property in the countryside and whilst working in the garden Karel unearths
an oddly shaped tree stump. With a little attention, he fashions the stump
into a near human form and presents it to his melancholy wife. To his
horror, she is delighted with the gift and takes to treating it as her
own son.
 Driven
to distraction by her desire for a child, Bozena feigns pregnancy with
the aid of nine numbered cushions of increasing size and the ‘child’
is eventually brought back to their town house. This is much to the protest
of Karel – who fears that neighbours and colleagues will think the
woman and himself insane and begins to regret creating the object. ‘Little
Otik’, as the stump is named, comes to life – much to the further
horror and disbelief of Karel who walks in on his wife suckling the stump,
and begins to behave like a human baby. A very hungry human baby –
as a few of the building’s residents and visitors discover in an
unpleasant manner…
All the Svankmejer trademarks are here, the exaggerated sound effects,
close-ups and obsessions with food and the process of eating, tongues,
eyeballs, teeth and a precocious little girl in the form of Alzbetka who
knows just how to deal with dirty old men.
As with his last work, Conspirators of Pleasure, animation takes
very much of a backseat to the actors on screen. This may come as a disappointment
to some who are familiar with his short films and previous features Alice
and Faust and as such their isn’t such a feeling of magic
about this piece. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing and an intention
hinted at one point as Alzbetka’s parents leave a cinema after a
screening of the recent The Mummy, asking "Why doesn't anyone make
good films anymore, films about people?"
The sixty-six year old director seems to have an almost stubborn reluctance
to develop his craft. All of his works use similar styles; the mixture
of live action with stop motion animation in this film looks identical
to work he was producing twenty years ago. This coupled with the old buildings
and vehicles that make up the Czech landscape add an almost timeless quality
to the movie.
Unfortunately, a little more timelessness would have helped as at 131
minutes (of which perhaps 5 contain any sort of animation) "Otesánek"
is overly long. This can be frustrating, especially as the film’s
ending is revealed early as Alzbetka reads from her book of fairy tales.
As such there is little room for suspense to develop as the viewer is
left awaiting the inevitable. That said, there are plenty of unnerving
moments which are rendered all the more effective by their lack of frequency
and there are enough moments of ‘less than normality’ in the
movie to reassure us that we are in the hands of a master surrealist.
MARC BLACKIE - 7 November 2001
|
