European Films

The original Czech title of the new film of Jan Svankmajer, Sílení, means both lunacy and lunatics according to the Rotterdam Film Festival Catalogue, though the official English title is Lunacy. Whichever you prefer, the moniker is well chosen because the film feels so loony that it is more akin to an X-rated Loony Toon on steroids rather than a fiction film. Again as per the catalogue (since I am not terribly familiar with the master's work I must confess), a typical Svankmajer includes blasphemous black humour, playful viewpoints and creative diversity. According to these three principles, the Maestro: Kings and Aces entry is a typical Svankmajer, with creative diversity in the context of Sílení more specifically referring to a potpourri of 1970s late German TV softporn, numerous sequences with stop-motion animated steaks and tongues and a depiction of 19th century France not only as a Czech speaking enclave but also a place where a gentleman in his carriage could surpass, on a leisurely trip through the country, the likes of an overturned (and wildly anachronistic) automobile and a flaming apple tree and not lift as much as an eyebrow in awe or wonder.

What all these disparate elements add up to in one and the same film is a good question, and not one that is easily answered by the film itself. As far as films with animated steak intermezzos can be considered as such, the story is relatively straightforward: a young man (Pavel Liska, think a Czech version of Rois et Reine’s Matthieu Almaric) who has nightmarish visions of two lunatic asylum workers wanting to lock him in a straightjacket is on his way to the funeral of his mother when he meets a strange Marquis, who like a certain French nobleman of the same standing was rather the Sadist. They strike up an acquaintance and soon the young man becomes part of the older man’s re-enacted fantasies; first as a voyeur and later also as a participant in such bizarre events as a therapeutic burial.

According to the introductory narrative the film is not art (“art is already almost dead anyway”) but simply a "horror" film. It would be a cheap shot to say here that "horrendous" is perhaps more appropriate (since there is a certain surreal philosophical comment on our society at work here), but madness alone does not a good movie make. Weird ideas piled onto one another can work, as anyone who has tried to explain to someone else what Les triplettes de Belville is actually about will know, but what is missing here is a method to the madness. Animated steaks are all good and well, but two hours of Sílení feels like watching Svankmajer’s initial pre-production sketch book rather than a polished final cut.