Daisies

This is really worth seeing. It's hard to explain why. There is no plot. There is no character development. There is a lot of beautiful surrealism. Like with anything from Dada and related art, the full effect only hits you after you stop asking "Why?" and "Whaa?" and "What the hell?". When you past that point, you'll have a great time.

The charming nihilism captured in the movie is something that we couldn't duplicate nowadays, even if we tried.

Blond Marie and brunette Marie are best friends and chaos creators. Brunette Marie declares that the world is spoiled and they're going to do the spoiling.

The girls are doing sexy baby acting. Their characters are bratty children living off of their sex appeal. Mostly, they are sex teases tricking food out of horny men. The film is experimental, doing a lot of different things all over the place. It's trying very hard to be surreal. Sometimes, it's using wacky sounds. It keeps switching from black and white to color while sometimes doing different color filters. I find a lot of it akin to student films trying to be artistic. It does stumble on some interesting effects once in awhile. The streaming train looks cool and the poker dot dresses are fun. There are intriguing edits. That's this movie. It's throwing a lot of spaghetti on the wall and some of them actually sticks. I just wish that it could limit the number of weird effects to give the best ideas more weight. It's strangely fascinating and an intriguing look into cinema at a certain time in a certain place. It's saying something about the atmosphere in Prague and the approach of spring.

Terrific surreal comedy combined with biting social commentary. From the very first scene, the film presents a world that is both deeply absurd and eerily familiar, drawing the viewer in with its off-kilter humor and playful tone.

The two lead actresses, Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová, give stunning performances as the two young women who gleefully embark on a series of outrageous adventures, from dining on mountains of food to wreaking havoc at a fancy dinner party. Their chemistry is electric, and their anarchic energy carries the film's narrative to its satisfyingly bizarre conclusion.

But beneath the surface of this madcap romp lies a deeper message about the nature of society and the roles we are expected to play within it. The film's critiques of consumerism, gender roles, and societal expectations are just as relevant today as they were in 1966, and the film's surreal visuals and absurdist humor make those critiques all the more potent.

Daisies is a great piece of cinematic art, a bizarre comedy that you can't look away from, with a trenchant social commentary that is just as relevant today as it was over 50 years ago.

Daisies is a wonderful embodiment of the Prague Spring. Hedonism and consumerism get criticised while the inflammatory criticism is coded more subtly. At a time when Stalinism was being re-examined and the reputations of many Czechs were being "rehabilitated", Daisies was a well-masked critique of these reforms. The crazy 1960s cinematography, the strange accents of the two main characters, and the sheer hedonism (the economy was quite poor at the time) give a surreal edge to what is not a surreal film. The film also hints of a Czechoslovakia identifying with Western Europe and impatient with the regime -- despite its reforms. The cinematography is fun and the story is a definite upending of the usual role of women in Czech films. If you're looking for deep symbolism, you'll be disappointed. But as a fun romp, a sign of the times, and a historical piece, Daisies is superb.

For its renewal of the spirit of DADA, for its sixties potlatch, for its fine excess, for its playful modernist montage, this is certainly the most formally revolutionary of all the Czech New Wave films I have seen. It escapes and transcends the heavy moral dissidence of the other great Prague Spring directors, and even manages to transcend its time and place. An authentic work of creative genius, its 'high spirits' belong to another world, a world which subverts the grip of everyday totalitarianism, and, as DADA updated, topples the philistines left and right.