Nourriture

Jan Svankmajer is the most unusual stop-motion filmmaker whose work I have seen. Instead of the typical models which are brought to life using this method, Svankmajer takes everyday objects or creepy stuff he's found, perhaps, in antique shops to create films that are truly unique.

I hate reviewing the films of Jan Svanmajer, as each time I see one of his films I am convinced that it's THE weirdest film the man has ever made. And yet, time and again, I find I am wrong, as some other film of his turns out to be even weirder. This is definitely true of "Food"--a truly bizarre and fanciful film that is really impossible to describe--you just need to see it for yourself. I will TRY to briefly explain what the film is like. As in other Svankmajer films, this one uses stop-motion but in this film it's mostly to animate people--making them move in a very jerky and robotic manner. What, exactly, they do is beyond belief but always involves the eating process. It consists of a segment about several different meals and all are VERY creative and ultra-strange--so strange that you might want to show this one to others. And, unlike a few of his films, this one is okay to show to most kids--it's creepy but in a very cartoony way. And, interestingly, it also uses some claymation which is blended into the characters. Very much worth seeing--especially if you are a bit weird yourself (which I happily am). I assume that this is NOT for everyone's taste.

Not to be missed!

Jan Svankmajer has portrayed many wacky things, but "Jidlo" is a whole new level. Portraying bizarre things happening during each meal, he goes all out. The first vignette "Breakfast" seems to be a slight repeat of his earlier movie "Et Cetera". The most eye-opening vignette is "Lunch", in which two men at a table can't get the waiter's attention, and resort to eating their plates, utensils, clothes, and even the table...but they don't intend to stop there. With "Dinner", Svankmajer decides to be grosser than the Farrelly brothers could ever dream of being.

Maybe this isn't Svankmajer's best movie ever, but it's still worth seeing.

Food is like a surreal comedy horror that comments on humanity's relationship with food, all through the lens of Jan Svankmajer's filmmaking lens of stop-motion and live-action mixing, making up for some truly fever-dream-like stories! For a short film it's got a lot of story in its three brief sequences: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.

Food is probably one of the truest films about dining, and possibly one of the greatest criticisms of communism encouraging people 'eating off each-other' (at least that's my interpretation of the Breakfast segment); Lunch's critique of classism in that regard is also very sharp, and Dinner's indulgence of 'eating your own body parts' is comically dark stuff at its finest.

The 1990s were really a remarkable time for stop-motion cinema and Food was something of a radical film in a post-Wallace-&-Gromit world (A Grand Day Out was released in 1989). Also it was an achievement for the Czech Republic finally breaking free from its communist trappings and restrictions on filmmaking.

Food is good stuff; it's plentiful and satirical on what it's covering, and shows the cross-quadrant world of dining and how every experience says something about the consumer (and their priorities) and what they do to get by.

Food is a 4/5 star film. 8/10 IMDb points. It's not for everyone, but it certainly says a lot about all of us. It's like a cerebral stop-motion film. And a good one at that.

It's an apt title and solo-focus for Food to be a Jan Svankmajer short; he's obsessed with it, in case you couldn't tell from his other movies (it's used sometimes to ridiculous amounts in Little Otik), and in both playful and gleefully deranged ways. In this short we see his knack at mixing live-action and stop-motion as two gentlemen at a table have plates of food and eat them up... then they eat the forks, then the plates, then the table, then the chairs, not to mention their clothes, and we see how their mouths suddenly flip over to stop-motion for just that bit of mastication and then back to the real human forms. There's also the great bit with the man as a kind of cash-register of food as people sit down and at the flick of a button on his jacket get plastic forks and other things to munch down on their lot of good. Sometimes its disgusting, and at the end when actual body parts get in the mix of things (including, not too undeservedly, a penis and testicles, which actually are the dividing line that isn't crossed) it's downright crude, but it's downright raunchy and crazy and quintessentially Svankmajer. The icing on the cake, of course, is the Blue Danube used as the two naked men munch on their table.

When I see something like this, I start to think of David Lynch. I've always contended that Lynch has made a career out of putting his nightmares on film. From Eraserhead to Twin Peaks we are haunted by the indifference of the world and the bizarre figures that inhabit it. This is all about the consumption of food, where everything we do is related to eating. But what this film does with gross but stunning animation is brings these strange things to us and perhaps create new nightmares. for us.