Edgar Allen Poe. The Marquis de Sade. Jan Svankmajer. If you're familiar with any of those people, and enjoy their work (or even if you don't enjoy it but you still understand what they do), then you are pretty much obligated to see this movie. If you like all those artists, then you've probably already seen it and this review is redundant.
Jan Svankmajer's job in this movie is to take the theme of the lunatics running the asylum to a new extreme--hopefully to the limit, as I wouldn't want to watch what anybody would try to do further. A young man named Jean Berlot has recurring dreams of being stuck in an insane asylum, and unfortunately for him these dreams attract the attention of a mysterious Marquis who's out to help "cure" a new friend. The Marquis, however, has his own, let's call 'em, "extreme philosophies." If the storyline isn't enough, the transitions between scenes are animated with pounds of animal meat.
Jan Svankmajer calls this his horror movie, and once again he shows a large amount of craftiness behind his impressions. The first two acts of the movie are so absurd they're mostly comedic, but the third act is surprisingly disturbing. You'd be surprised which characters you end up caring about and which characters you end up hating. In the end it becomes a question of how to choose your own insanity... because in a world where insanity exists sanity seems to take fifth pier.
One of the more revealing parts of this movie involves its anachronism. The wooden sets are filled with timeless pieces, the gray weather can be representative or give off a feeling of a period piece, and the Marquis and Jean's journey in the coach crosses Bubonic plague-style imagery with freeways. What's more terrifying about this scene when one thinks about it later on is how even outside of the insane asylum there doesn't seem to be any sense of normalcy.
Which is one of the things that is hard about this movie. Jean's delusions and his light obsessiveness makes him an untrustworthy narrator in a world where it seems like every single character harbors some maladjustment. Structurally speaking, it's unproductive to make insane characters populate an insane world without any norm for the audience to build on. For this foundation, Svankmajer seems to rely entirely on the audience, which works amazingly well. Watching this movie, for me, was even more enjoyable while hearing the laughs and moans of the people in the theatre around me. However the real drama in this film seemed to come from my own sense of values and reality desperately trying to find a handhold within the philosophies projected within the narrative. In the end the subjectivity of reality becomes more an issue of choosing one's own insanity.
--PolarisDiB
Jan Svankmajer's job in this movie is to take the theme of the lunatics running the asylum to a new extreme--hopefully to the limit, as I wouldn't want to watch what anybody would try to do further. A young man named Jean Berlot has recurring dreams of being stuck in an insane asylum, and unfortunately for him these dreams attract the attention of a mysterious Marquis who's out to help "cure" a new friend. The Marquis, however, has his own, let's call 'em, "extreme philosophies." If the storyline isn't enough, the transitions between scenes are animated with pounds of animal meat.
Jan Svankmajer calls this his horror movie, and once again he shows a large amount of craftiness behind his impressions. The first two acts of the movie are so absurd they're mostly comedic, but the third act is surprisingly disturbing. You'd be surprised which characters you end up caring about and which characters you end up hating. In the end it becomes a question of how to choose your own insanity... because in a world where insanity exists sanity seems to take fifth pier.
One of the more revealing parts of this movie involves its anachronism. The wooden sets are filled with timeless pieces, the gray weather can be representative or give off a feeling of a period piece, and the Marquis and Jean's journey in the coach crosses Bubonic plague-style imagery with freeways. What's more terrifying about this scene when one thinks about it later on is how even outside of the insane asylum there doesn't seem to be any sense of normalcy.
Which is one of the things that is hard about this movie. Jean's delusions and his light obsessiveness makes him an untrustworthy narrator in a world where it seems like every single character harbors some maladjustment. Structurally speaking, it's unproductive to make insane characters populate an insane world without any norm for the audience to build on. For this foundation, Svankmajer seems to rely entirely on the audience, which works amazingly well. Watching this movie, for me, was even more enjoyable while hearing the laughs and moans of the people in the theatre around me. However the real drama in this film seemed to come from my own sense of values and reality desperately trying to find a handhold within the philosophies projected within the narrative. In the end the subjectivity of reality becomes more an issue of choosing one's own insanity.
--PolarisDiB