Lunacy

I saw a totally bonkers Czech film at the NFT last night called Lunacy. I've always been attracted to Eastern Europe culture for some reason (and I am not just talking Belami). I like the gothic aspect of their culture, the romanticism, the melancholy, the communist esthetics...

This latest provocation from surrealist master Jan Svankmajer is loosely based on two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and inspired by the works of the Marquis de Sade. It's set in 19th century France (or 21th century Czech republic, I wasn't sure) and it's about a troubled young man who, upon his return from his mum's funeral meets le Marquis (de Sade? possibly) who claims to be able to cure him from his fear of madness by taking him to a lunatic asylum he helps running with some rather unusual methods.




It kind of dragged a little, there were some inventive scenes but it went downhill after the intriguing opening. I am not sure why but it is a given that any Eastern European film must include a scene with some fat hairy old men screaming and possibly bonking some nubile young woman and this did not disappoint on that respect, as much as I hate watching fat hairy old men scream.

Every single live action scene was followed by a short stop motion clip where severed tongues and eyes crawled all over the set, the kind of grotesque trademark of Svankmajer which has put me off watching his more adventures previous offerings in the past but it actually worked quite well in here.

There is a metaphor somewhere about totalitarism against absolute freedom which reminded me what my philosophy teacher at college was telling me about democracy and how we are all too stupid and irresponsible to deserve it but it was still fairly enjoyable even without giving this theory too much thought, I was hoping for a bit more gothic horror but at least I came out thinking the Czech language is very pretty.

Shame my boy friend could not be with me, because of his work, the style of his own stop motion project is so similar to that film.

The trailer does not do it any justice but you get the idea