Le cas de l'apprenti bourreau

Case for a Rookie Hangman is a wondrous journey of Lemuel Gulliver to the lands of absurd. It's a brilliant adaptation of Jonathan Swift's classic in the form of postmodern comedy. "Everyone knows how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas by his contrivance, the most ignorant person at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, may write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, law, mathematics and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study. He then led me to the frame, about the sides whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty foot square, placed in the middle of the room. The superficies was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered on every square with papers pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language in their several moods, tenses, and declensions, but without any order. The professor then desired me to observe, for he was going to set his engine at work." Rejoice, Jonathan Swift was an inventor of a computer and the first programmer! The film is wittily hilarious.

Very little can prepare you for the pyrotechnical intro to visionary film-maker, Pavel Jurácek's deliriously surreal take on Jonathan Swift's immortal classic. Surrealistically filtered through, Jurácek's audacious imagination the eerie, frequently phantasmagoric journey of his spectacularly unfortunate, Gulliver (Lubomir Kostelka) who descends deliriously through a wild, altogether more bizarre rabbit hole!

After arriving by disorientating means most mysterious, Lemuel Gulliver brusquely discovers that his alien presence in the manifestly odd locale of Balnibari rapidly plunges this hapless astral traveller into all manner of esoteric, bureaucratic and culturally baffling encounters! Gulliver's anomalous presence among these impenetrably strange Balnibarians proves dramatic. The antagonistic locals regard him as a far from benign figure, cruelly putting him through a fascinatingly absurdist, Kafkaesque trial, whereby Gulliver's not infrequent cry of 'I'm a foreigner!!' only drags him ever deeper into a conundrum both, Gulliver and the viewer are at great pains to decipher!

'Case for a Rookie Hangman' still provokes far more curiosity than most mainstream cinema, encouraging the viewer's imagination to catch-up with the playful director's inventive mise-en-scene! Like any successful cover version, the very best interpretations capture the spirit of the original while adding something entirely fresh. Film magician, Pavel Jurácek has done that, and so much more besides! Trying to describe a film so stunningly unique as 'Prípad pro zacínajícího kata' is no less futile than explaining the virtue of an especially vivid psychedelic episode to a stalwart teetotaller! Some might feel occasionally overwhelmed, hopefully less will be indifferent, while many shall be entirely charmed, and, perhaps, inspired by maestro, Pavel Jurácek thrilling, darkly surreal masterpiece.

This motion picture tells us about the special trip of a very special gentleman named Pan Gulliver who was really surprised finding a rabbit Oscar on the road, wearing the checked shirt with the short trousers. Two minutes later we learn about the Balnebard's country where the people keep silent one day a week sparing the air, where there is an immortal poet living on the railway-station.This strange surreal world where black is white and white is black is headed by a king who is working now as a doorman in Monte-Carlo. Now there is only one person living in the castle - Prince Milevin - who's got nothing except excessive consumption of all the castle's wine-storage.Too many uncertain questions with too few certain answers.

A great cameraman's and director's work. They perfectly created the specific space of Balnebards's terrarium.

This movie is about our childhood dreams. Lemuel Gulliver is seeking his love (who he lost in teenage years) in strange land full of strange people. But the story isn´t so main for this movie but atmosphere and feelings. You find yourself dreaming about your childhood dreams, strange adult world around you and maybe you find there are still interesting places and miracles in the world around you.

"Prima facie, Jurácek's strangely enrapturing feature can be patly construed as an allegorical tool leveling at the autocratic government at then, with its symbolic innuendos and the depiction of a tinpot monarchy and a seeming utopia in the throe of high-handed surveillance and hypocrisy, but if we peel it off its ambiguous messages, what in the kernel is indeed, a fantastically configured fairytale devoid of the usual Hollywood triteness and affectation, archly cynical, beguilingly inexplicable, and capriciously surprising, Jurácek competently sinks his teeth into actualizing this lollapalooza, were it not for the deplorable suppression from the Establishment, he could have become a major player in the world cinema, alas, bless we still have CASE FOR A ROOKIE HANGMAN to quench the ire."

read my full review on my blog: cinema omnivore