Insanidade

Svankmajer impresses as always. His movies are always beautiful, disturbing, and wonderful. The acting ensemble is also impressive..and I cannot imagine a better actor to play the Marquis de Sade. My one criticism, though, is a big one:

The story...there's already a much better version of this story. It's "The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade". ( Peter Weiss' play from 1963).

Now - I assume Svankmajer is aware of Weiss's play, but maybe he isn't? I don't know. I did highly enjoy Svankmajer's movie.

Part of me thinks he should have just done Weiss's play.

I just saw this film at the Montreal fantasia film festival. And this being Svankmajer's most recent film, I jumped for tickets. Absolutely amazing. Something of a political comment, the film show's us to ways of running an insane asylum. I have always loved Jan Svankmajer for his use of macabre animation (using raw meat, bones and eye balls). And it's use in context with 'Lunacy' is chilling. Truly one of the best horror films I've see all year. It's not the sort of horror that is entertaining to watch or bring your girlfriend. But if you love films and your looking for a horror film that will keep you thinking...then find a way to see this film.

Functioning mainly as a mixture of three demented masters of art (these "heroes" of mine being Edgar Allan Poe, the Marquis de Sade, and Jan Svankmajer), "Lunacy" portrays a world of hopeless depravity. Demented desires are shown to be hidden within those one both extremes of the social spectrum. "Lunacy" is a film that lives up to its title, showcasing a world of idiocy, chaos, and oppression.

In his brilliant introduction, Svankmajer claims that this is a film inspired by the works of both Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade. Being a fan of both authors, this only further fueled my fascination with the film. Poe's tortured soul often dominates the more melancholic and moody sections of such a masterwork, as well as largely inspiring the overall story. de Sade's sick spirit shines even brighter as Svankmajer displays the perverted sexual acts and desires performed by a common libertine. His surreal lens not flinching one bit, blasphemous rituals of twisted eroticism are performed in a way both chilling and occasionally amusing. Further mirroring de Sade's unconventional brilliance are the nihilistic philosophical musings of the film's own marquis, a man who refuses to hide his perverted desires, hatred for Mother Nature, and disdain for religion.

While juggling the atmospheres of ever impending doom and inescapable tragedy, "Lunacy" also manages to be one of the funniest movies of the century so far. Without fail, Svankmajer slyly mocks society using both grotesque horror and riotous black humor. Gags fill up Svankmajer's cinematic canvas like his character of the marquis' sperm does the inside of his sexual victims. Here, hilarity comes in many (often absolutely absurdist) forms, from slapstick to social commentary. Densely layered, Svankmajer's film crowds itself with much comic insanity by the second half. Many sequences work as both scenes of sadistic horror and gross out humor, so never be afraid to burst with laughter despite the urge to spray puke all over the movie screen like a hose.

I recently saw this film at the Jeonju film festival in Korea. It was by far the best film I saw all weekend. Selini is like a combination of Godard, Herzog and classic Czech animation- the kind of committed and convincing political film making that is increasingly rare these days. In his introduction Svankmajer compares the excesses of extreme reactionary and liberal regimes and argues that we currentlycombine the worst of both worlds in encouraging people to do whatever they want whilst relying on punishment and fear to keep them under control. The plot (based on an Edgar Allen Poe short story) is simple- an innocent traveller bears witness to the lunatics taking over the asylum. But the nightmarish atmosphere of confusion and fear, enhanced by gruesome stop motion animation between scenes, is both compelling, disturbing and extremely effective in communicating the directors ideas. The acting is committed and convincing and the story has, like the decline into madness, a chilling inevitability about it. The film uses this simple story to explore more challenging philosophical concepts. You don't have to be a fan of art-house cinema to understand and enjoy this exciting movie. 9/10

Jan Svankmajer is a filmmaker who started out in animation, and made dozens of short films, most of them in surrealist settings and modes, and it was only when he got into feature films that he used live-action a lot more. This might explain why when he directs live-action you may not see certain usual things in movies, like with characters talking to the camera when in conversation (not sure if this breaks the 180-degree rule or not), or in a couple of awkward edits or his penchant for close-ups on mouths speaking words. And yet with each passing film I've come across from him- Alice, Faust, Little Otik- he gets a little better each time around. Now with Lunacy, his latest feature, it's by far his most assured and confidently insane direction (and rightfully so for this!) and featuring only minimal stop-motion animation. Thankfull, this animation is with pieces of meat put to piano honky tonk music.

But aside from the direction being stronger, and Svankmajer's actors being better than usual, it's such a thematically rich film that only a surrealist could pull off: one might say 'what does this mean or what's the symbol of the body doing that or that piece of food or the tar and feather or 13 punishments?' Secretly, Svankmajer's response, probably akin to Bunuel, would be 'does it ultimately matter?' In the scope of Lunacy, a film based on works by Poe and Marquis de Sade (what parts are which will only be known to those who've read the specific Poe stories, or are familiar enough with Sade, though I can likely guess the latter's influence in the last fifteen minutes), it's about the simple question: who's sane or not, and what defines sanity? Our protagonist, whom we think is the sanest of all, has recurring nightmares of men coming into his room at night with a straight-jacket ready to take him away and then his super-violent reaction. Is he, perhaps, any less wacko than the Marquis, or his fellow Doctor with the fake beards?

Well... maybe, comparatively, he is saner, but the question still stands amid a matter of degree; towards the end we're faced with the question of sanity in the face of "corporal punishment." Maybe the point is akin to the old George Carlin line about life being a freak-show and being born is just getting a ticket for the ride. Jean (Pavel Liska) is on his way back from his mother's funeral and is "befriended" (very loose quotes) by a Marquis (perfectly cast Jan Triska, definitely one of the creepiest of all screen villains) who by horse and buggy in present day takes him to his castle where Jean witnesses "blasphemous" acts at night with the Marquis and a bunch of naked ladies in a barn with an over-nailed cross. One thing leads to another- including a presumed suffocation by banana- and the Marquis oddly convinces Jean to come to the sanitarium to get some voluntary 'assistance'. Once there, it's a total upside-down cake where the lunatics have taken over, so to speak and literally, as the Marquis and Dr. Murloppe run rough-shod as the real doctors are locked in the basement, tarred and feathered with a bunch of chickens.

So much of this is rich and densely packed material that it kind of goes by simply. Ironic then (or maybe as a good old told-with-a-straight-faced joke) that Svankmajer makes an intro before the film about how "this is not art, art is probably dead anyway" when his film is just that: whacked out film-art to the tune of classic horror, as the genre goes, and as classic satire. This is full-bodied satire throughout, even when the style might suggest otherwise; just watch that super-crazy (however somewhat lucid) scene where the Marquis and doctor stage a reading and a kind of still-life of sorts in recreating a painting with the loonies- how the camera slides along those clapping hands and the Marquis reciting the words so eloquently. It's like a momentary glimpse at the blinding power of empowerment, of everyone in the room including Jean with getting poor Charlotte off the stage. While there are tendencies for it to get nasty (just in those 13 Sadistic punishments, no pun intended), the focus is always clear and powerful... and ultimately very funny.

Did I mention the meat seq-ways? This is just by itself extraordinary work and adds to the confounded but amazing artistry in the project. So much work was put in to tell these little stories of pieces of meat forming together, tongues and eyeballs, meat being tarred and feathered and humping, meat getting pecked at by chickens, etc. The combination of this and the fantastic live-action propel it up to being Svankmajer's best I've seen yet, and by the end we're left with whatever interpretation we want: does the meat represent the people going whatever way they will to form new shapes, or is commentary on what's going on in the story, or is it just eye-popping animation for the hell of the entire theme of lunacy all over the place? Why show any of this dark and despairing philosophical and psychological and physical things? Svankmajer's answer, undoubtedly, would be "why not?" A+