Die Wohnung

In many of Jan Svankmajer's films, you really cannot ask why things are happening. He's a surrealist and his work is not supposed to make sense. So, my advice is just sit back and enjoy--and this one is very, very enjoyable.

"Byt" begins with a poor guy going into a very strange house where the laws of physics simply don't apply. He tries to find a way out, but it's almost like the house is fighting him--messing with his mind. A few examples include: lighting a match and opening a stove--only to have water come pouring out, chair legs that grow and shrink to prevent you from using the chair, glasses of beer that change as fast as you can blink into various sizes and photos that simply refuse to be straightened. As I said, there really is no reason for this--it just is. BUT, it also is very clever and quite funny. Through the use of stop-motion, Svankmajer has managed to keep my attention and create a one of a kind strange world. Well worth seeing.

.. and Beckett's and Sartre's too.

One of the most wildly inventive short films ever made comes from Czech master surrealist Jan Svankmajer.

Employing stop-motion, live-action and a bottomless pit of absurd genius, The Flat is a film that keeps on giving. Just when you think it can't get any better (or worse if you're the protagonist), it does just that.

The score is beautiful yet appropriately unsettling and gets right under your skin.

A rare film that makes you grin and squirm at the same time.

this was my first contact with Svankmajer. And what a strong impression i got! He is 'labeled' with the surrealist movement, and is frequently attached to the other surrealist names in cinema. In this film alone, i don't check any of what might be called surrealism, except for some aesthetic choices, and some physics of the world within i will explain. That is because surrealism had always to do with seeking to deliver through art states of consciousness which are beyond self-awareness. Dreams, for instance. Things which we can't control, which are not material, we can't touch, which happen in undefined time (in shape and duration). None of that is here. This has, of course, a veiled political speech between the lines. We have a character which is told where to go, he follows arrows which lead to wherever someone wants. He is given everything, but he can't taste anything. He is taken to doors, but he is not allowed to open them. He is given food, but than he has a dog to eat it. This takes place entirely inside an apartment. Of course this is (or could be) the direct metaphor to the Soviet Union, the iron curtain, all those elements which motivated many filmmakers and artists to create art that could express desperation and in satisfaction without alerting censors. That's not surrealist (believing now in some of the ideologies used than might be surrealistic, this is not). But this is, instead, a fantastic experiment. I don't know much about Czech animation, or Czech cinema, but i'm willing to explore it. I saw a short, a while ago, 'Prílepek', it was a very good experience from someone who learned a lot from this Czech reference. So i'm sensing a continuity that i care about exploring, so i'll be looking for more of these works.

What we have here (and that is more close we can get to the surrealism mood here) is a world which defines its own rules. I mean physical rules. It's a world were the material behaviour of materials and objects is not the same as in our real world. It is possible for a man to place an arm across a wall, or a wood bed to completely disintegrate as if it was eaten up. That is what takes us to another dimension, and the frantic pace and editing also. The stop-motion is remarkable, and the technical level really very high here.

My opinion: 4/5 don't miss it.

There's something about art and artists. Sometimes the effect of the art isn't a conversation between the viewer and the artist, instead between the artist and the viewer. And often neither party knows it.

Its particularly apparent when the artist is damaged in some way and he or she create art that conveys that damage. This is common, I think because when there is a human trying to reach us, we allow an inadequate vehicle. I think the effect is so common and so well understood that weak artists, artists who cannot create powerful work, feign this dynamic.

Here we have an odd little student film, almost a student film. It conveys a world that doesn't work -- not comically but frustratingly as if it were deliberately teasing us. Whatever is behind this flat is evil.

Watch closely and you will see that the film is rather incompetent. But we don't notice, because as with Tim Burton we see the strange dude who made it. And we imagine what type of man he would have to be, and under what conditions he lives.

(I could have chosen a dozen filmmakers as examples and you would have equally known what I meant.) Either way, this is uninteresting.

Contrast this to "The Cube" of about the same time, the one by Jim Henson, also a puppeteer making the bridge to film-making. It is based on much the same notions. Yet Henson's little project is a marvel of competence, several competences.

What we have here instead is just a glass through which we see a sad man.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

In one of Czech director Jan Svankmajer's many surreal shorts, an unidentified man is trapped in a room where nothing seems to act normally. Whether it's silverware that won't pick up food, walls that won't support him, or anything else, this is an existentially delicious hell. What's the point of making movies like this, we may ask. Well, what's the point of anything? I guess that if nothing else, Svankmajer was just exercising his creativity and imagination. I would suspect that in the Eastern Bloc, he probably didn't have a lot of fancy technology to work with, but he had talent, and that's what counts. "Byt" (how's that word pronounced?) certainly shows that. I recommend it. Czech it out.