Jabberwocky

Considering that the English title for this short film is JABBERWOCKY and it began with a recitation of the Lewis Carroll poem, you'd think that this film was going to be "Jabberwocky". My daughter, a huge Carroll fan, sat in restless anticipation...and then, nothing!! Instead of Jabberwocky, the action on the screen had nothing to do with the poem and after a minute or so they even stopped reading the poem. From then on, it was a very fast-paced and super-weird stop-motion film set in a child's room circa 1900. For what seemed like an eternity, toys danced and moved in crazy manners. Some were even very creepy images--such as soups being made of assorted doll body parts. Now some of this stop-motion was very clever--especially the imagery and metaphors. But, at no point was it Jabberwocky. So what we have is passable entertainment and nothing more.

By the way, this film is part of the CINEMA 16: European Shorts DVD. On this DVD are 16 shorts. Most aren't great, though because it contains THE MAN WITHOUT A HEAD, COPY SHOP, RABBIT and WASP, it's an amazing DVD for lovers of short films and well worth buying.

The standard evaluation of this short stop-motion animated film, "Jabberwocky," other than those who, perhaps wisely, throw up their arms in bewilderment, seems to be that besides the introductory recitation of Lewis Carroll's words it has little to nothing to do with the poem. But, I think it has more do with its literary source than do other "Jabberwocky" inspired movies, namely Terry Gilliam's "Jabberwocky" (1977) and Disney's 2010 "Alice in Wonderland," both of which were concerned with rendering the poem's plot. How utterly dull and obtuse of them. Better to do what Humpty Dumpty did in "Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Saw There," by explaining the enigmatic poem full of nonsense words by further obfuscating it in perhaps added connotations. That's essentially what this disciple of eggheads, a surrealist animator and admirer of Freud and Carroll, Jan Svankmajer, does here.

Early on, we're treated to some familiar images for Svankmajer, including a cupboard, with its opening doors, and insects infested in food, both of which parallel nicely with the imagery of his later, feature-length "Alice" (1988) film and the books' motifs with doors and consumption. I suppose the central narrative, however, if one can claim anything here to be a "narrative," involves a mirrored, dream-like critique on the societalisation of children, like Alice. The child, first represented by the backside being spanked, comes to be depicted by the dolls. Small dolls are borne from bigger dolls, bells ring, they play house, cook and are cooked up, are ground up, ironed out and put in their gilt cage. All the while, some bearded figure of patriarchy sits atop the wall looking onward as the scarecrow son of a boy's outfit dances about the room before going off to war with toy soldiers. Eventually, children's attire is replaced in the cupboard by the suit of conformity. This is far more Carrollian than most other supposed adaptations of the Alice books, or the films of Gilliam, let alone Disney.

Forget the lessening lessons; give them something clever in pictures and amusing nonsense to play with. That's what Carroll did and so, too, Svankmajer. The line trying to get out of the maze, which upon each failure to do so is punished by the black cat knocking over the toy blocks is the highlight.

If you've seen any of Jan Švankmajer's work, then you should have an idea of what to expect in his adaptation of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky". "Žvahlav aneb šatičky slaměného Huberta" emphasizes the more disturbing aspects of the story. It's worth remembering that what we now think of as children's stories were not always so cute. Švankmajer's version contains all manner of contorting objects, including a line looking to break free from a maze (what it does at the end might get seen as a swipe at Czechoslovakia's Soviet-backed regime). It's not any masterpiece, but I recommend it, as I do the rest of Švankmajer's work. The Czech title means "Jabberwocky, or Straw Hubert's Clothes".

Jabberwocky is one of the apotheosis in the complexity of animation and amount of work. Very atmospheric with strange music and weird old toys from the east of Europa. See it again and again with the same pleasure.

Watch the dancing knife, i still ask myself how they do this...

This film is impossible to describe. It is a melange of incredibly evocative images with some haunting music. There is little direction to the events. I'm sure one could analyze individual parts and connect them. There is a recurring maze that is at the center, followed by a huge black cat who is quite destructive. But one should just soak in the images and let it go at that.