I've seen many films by Jan Svankmajer, short and feature and I like them all but the most astounding film of all and since couple of days ago, my favorite is "The Ossuary"(1970).
"The Ossuary" is the most stunning, disturbing, masterful and creative short film even for Svankmajer. I usually would stay away from the words THE MOST but "The Ossuary" deserves the epithet for the unique subject matter which is a voyage inside the Sedlec Ossuary, a small chapel located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic with an actual tour-guide (or rather a substitute for a tour guide) who tells the story of the Ossuary to the group of middle school students. The ossuary contains approximately 40,000 human skeletons which have been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. During the Black Death in the mid 14th century, and after the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century many thousands of people were buried there.
In 1870, Frantiek Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to arrange the bones of 40,000 people or so artistically and orderly. What he had created with the help of his wife and two children is the most disturbing, macabre, ominous and unsettling works of art I've ever seen: four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. A huge chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the center of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vaults. The guide proudly informed the audience that the USA government had offered the Czechoslovakia government $100, 000 for chandelier but the offer was declined. The signature of Master Rint and the year 1870 carved in bone can be seen on he wall near the entrance.
In 1970, the centenary of Rint's contributions, Jan vankmajer was commissioned to make a "cultural documentary" about the ossuary. The result was a 10 minute long nightmare of the images that could be compared to the darkest and most pessimistic works in the history of Art. Bosch's "Inferno" looks like a sitcom next to the quiet and silence horrors of the artistically and lovingly arranged human bones and sculls that would never for a second let a mesmerized viewer forget about decay and death. Svankmajer did not have to create any hellish nightmarish images or visions - all he had to do - to let his camera go wild in capturing the never stopping and never ending Dance of Death.
Absolutely fascinating, terrifying, and unforgettable.
