Lunacy

Charlota and Jean

The last man standing at the surrealists’ party, Czech animator Jan Svanmajer is as good as his tag in 2005’s Lunacy (aka Sílení), a blend of live action and trademark stop-motion, using two Edgar Allan Poe stories and the life of the Marquis de Sade as inspiration. Svankmajer himself pops up just before the story gets going, in front of a white screen, to inform us that art is almost dead and has been replaced with advertising, that the deep has been replaced by the superficial, the implication being that what we’re about to see is a) art and b) deep. Bold claim. He’s also told us that his film is about two … Read more

Alice

Alice meets the Mad Hatter

Jan Svankmajer is hardly a household name, yet he is one of the most influential animators ever. He’s not Walt Disney, maybe, but you can see his stamp in the work of Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam and even, through squinted eyes, Nick (Wallace and Gromit) Park. His live-action/stop-frame adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is a prime example of what he does – a darkly surreal, loud, clanking, gothic distillation of Poe, De Sade, Kafka (a fellow Czech). It’s also about the best film adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s much abused work. Uncle Walt chose to play cute with the story, but Svankmajer goes the other way – a white rabbit that bleeds sawdust, for … Read more