Hra s kameny

Jan Svankmajer's "A Game with Stones" shows that, even though it was made only three years after his first film, the filmmaker was already beginning to test the boundaries of his creative mind in the different things he could do with stop-motion animation. His first effort, "The Last Trick", utilized stop-motion but was not quite the creepy and surrealistic short most might expect; his second, "Johann Sebastian Bach: Fantastia G-moll" explored the concept of putting animated images to music; and his third, "Punch and Judy" contained little stop-motion but displayed the humorously bizarre mind of the maker. This film, like his second, explores putting music to images as well, but shows development of Svankmajer in that the animation is more complex and the visuals more interesting. It is also a little bit more his standard style compared to his first works.

The set-up is that a bucket - stationed below a clock - catches stones that are released from a small faucet every time the clock chimes. After each succession of stones drops into the bucket, the stones become animated as they dance around, break apart, and form shapes and figures. As another reviewer has pointed out, the style which Svankmajer utilizes to create the abstraction is very polished and quick, giving the short a hypnotic feel, and the music timing with the visual aspect is very well executed. As far as the set-up itself goes, it's a wonderfully entertaining abstraction for what it is, yet not, as others might say, as good as the filmmaker's later works.

"Hra S Kameny" is one of Jan Svankmajer's earliest shorts. And, because it's so early, it isn't quite the weird style you might expect (it's not particularly creepy)--though it still weird. It's also difficult to describe, so it's one best seen. Using his usual stop-motion, Svankajer animates black and white (and later other color) stones--all set to the music of a music box. The oddest thing in the film is how huge stones appear to be coming out of a very small faucet. Otherwise, it consists of stones dancing about and not much more. It's all times very nicely to the music and a worthy early effort--but also the sort of film the average person would probably never watch or enjoy. So, it's definitely for huge Svankmajer fans who want to try to see everything this master animator has made. And, it's oddly hypnotic as well...

Though random at first, there is obvious pattern in the repetition here. Every time a cuckoo clock strikes 12, stones drip out of a faucet into a bucket. Then undergo various transformations, until dropped from the bucket on the floor below. The opening shots, which are cracks on the walls and floors as their own landscape, presages the meticulous attention to texture. So we initially have stones as as this symbolic duality of black and white, then stones animated as beings, then parts of the anatomy, then overall shapes as consisting of these smaller rocks, then their disintegration as they crack against each other. Finally the bucket breaks, which is a freedom of sorts and the next batch of stones do not have to go through the process of forms. What it precisely means though is unclear to me. I hope the other Svankmajers are more evocative.

As the first Jan Svankmajer movie that I ever saw, "Hra s kameny" (alternately called "Spiel mit Steinen" or "A Game with Stones") holds a special place. It shows stones dripping out of a faucet every quarter hour and doing a series of wacky dances, contortions, and whatnot. The kiss is especially impressive. As for the end, I guess that it's saying that all good things have to end eventually - although in this case, it sort of brought the end on itself.

All in all, I've heard how Jan Svankmajer's work is often bizarre (even subversive), but you truly have to see it to believe it. In conclusion, "rock" and roll!