The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer

The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer, is a delight if your looking for a strange puppet animation short film of the highest water. You've seen nothing like it, unless you've seen the perfect work of The Brothers Quay. For fans, like myself of strange animation, and Fans, like myself of The Rocky Horror Picture Show this is that perfect short film to wet your appetite.

If you're into film, you're most likely familiar with Stephen and Timothy Quay as well as Jan Švankmajer. Remarkably talented stop-motion animators, they are also distinctly different and for that reason alone worth seeing together.

This film is easy to see as a mere acknowledgment, but it's more than that. Švankmajer definitely features in the film as the strangely madcap creator of illusions in his cabinet; the ambiguity then arises from the fact the boy, to me at least, is the one who explores the world and has the pep and spiritedness. He's the one whose mind is explored, put on the table and ultimately stuffed with the things the creator wants.

When I think of Švankmajer, I think of a bleak reality that translates to socio-political commentary in filmic terms. The Brothers Quay, however, I associate with purely cinematic stories, their metaphorical film language not so much describing even allegorically any external condition but rather triggering solely visual reactions, much like Joyce's "Finnegans Wake", to which I already referred to in an earlier review. For me the Quay's speak more. Not that it has to be either or.

This is an excellent introduction to the work of the Quay Brothers and stop-motion animation. It is enjoyable for fans of Svankmajer, but also for fans of the painter Arcimboldo, whose paintings and characters are featured heavily in this short; most notably the Librarian, which is brought to 3D life as the lead puppet, and also characters from The Seasons, The Elements, and others: Vertumnus, Summer, Fire, and so forth. In fact, a subtitle in the film is Portrait of Svankmajer a la Arcimboldo. Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 - 1593) was an Italian painter known for creating portraits composed of fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books, all arranged in a fashion that constitutes a portrait of a character which is represented by all those diverse elements.

I just read a reference to the Quay Brothers and in it was a description of their animation. So I sought out a couple of examples. In this one we have little boy doll. He has things in his head which are emptied out. From that point on he is missing the top of his head. A "person" with metallic arms (like probes) and a head that looks like an open book comes in and seems to be teaching. A petrified tarantula is probed, sight unseen, and information about it results in the old men and the elephant thing, where the observations are based on limited information. Along with this are movement of pins, sugar cubes, and other objects that come to life. I will seek out a few more of their works.

The Quay brothers style is at it's best here, with beautiful, surreal puppets telling the story of Czech animator Jan Svankmajer's life. The expressionist, stop-motion puppet work is perfectly suited to tell the story of Svankmajer's own surreal film-making. Split into several sections, the puppets (one expressing Svankmajer himself) act out the scenes, with maze-like, unidentifiable sets, dancing pins and a mesmerising soundtrack. All these elements combine into a treat for the eyes, and a severe hammering to the brain. The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer is a marvellous short, particularly of interest to fans of Svankmajer himself.