Darkness/Light/Darkness

I can't stop watching the short and feature films of the masterful animator Jan Svankmajer. His films manage to be surreal, creepy, weird, and funny, and "Darkness Light Darkness" manages to be one of his greatest accomplishments!

It is a very simple short film. The premise is that, in a room, various human body parts come together to create an actual human body, in only 7 minutes. It's a bizarre concept, which manages to be much less complicated than, say, "Dimensions of Dialogue" or "The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia" which both are much more political, and full of symbolism. "Darkness Light Darkness" isn't really political (at least I do not think it is, but there's the slight chance it could be, considering Svankmajer actually said that ALL of his films are political in the short documentary about him called "Animator of Prague"), but it is really surreal.

The atmosphere is somewhat uncomfortable and uneasy. No soundtrack accompanies the bizarre creation of this human body. But, as discomforting as its atmosphere is, "Darkness Light Darkness" also manages to be quite hilarious in its own weird way.

It serves as a sort of twist on the body horror genre, replacing horror with Svankmajer's dark sense of humor. He seems to play around with the strange concept, and fits some pretty funny scenarios into its short 7 minute runtime.

This is one of my favorite short films.

This really cool short film is everything you want from surrealism.

It's bizarre, freaky, but it's not arbitrary. It establishes a simple concept and follows it through with a fetishistic weirdness in every moment.

It's not meant to convey some cryptic message, it just gets it's hands dirty as it delves into the dream like and reshuffles the familiar human body.

This 7 minutes short is a fascinating clay animation where a man constructs himself from clay (literally), being a God and his creature at the same time, putting the different parts of body together in a very small room. The more parts find their pace, the bigger the man becomes, the smaller and more suffocating the room gets. "Darkness-Light-Darkness" has been seen by many critics and viewers as a very strong allegory of suffocating life in Eastern Europe which is true, but I also see it as an allegory of a struggle every talented and deeply feeling artist goes through in the search for beauty and meaning regardless the political system or the country they live. From the darkness of non-existence to the light of knowledge to the unbearable darkness of being - that's the road Svankmajer takes us and as usual, his vision is not a cheerful or optimistic one.

"Darkness/Light/Darkness" is one of the most creative films from Jan Svankmajer, if not exactly his best or most praised work. To be sure, it doesn't carry an underlying meaning as in "Dimensions of Dialogue" and it lacks the story aspect of some of his earlier, less characteristic work, but even despite all of this the short is guaranteed to be perhaps the most memorable one anyone watching Svankmajer's work could imagine. The creativity exercised is remarkable and the craft is brilliant, including the setting and stop motion that is genius and entertaining.

Svankmajer's film basically consists of a body constructing itself from a number of body parts inside what appears to be a doll's house. It's quite enjoyable watching the different parts figure out where they're supposed to go and what the final result looks like. The title seems to be unrelated initially, but thinking about its relative meaning to what's happening in the film, I think it's a reference to the first day in history after God created the heavens and the earth, thus making an allusion to the theme of creation that both the movie and the creation story share. Overall on par with all of Svankmajer's other work and it's no wonder it is so well known.a.

An inventive, even witty Svankmajer short (lasting 6 minutes) which basically sees the various disembodied components of the human body converging inside a low-ceilinged house(!) on their way to assembling the whole. Sometimes, though, it seems they're not quite sure how it's all supposed to turn out – as ever more organs knock at the door demanding entry; the biggest laugh unsurprisingly involves male genitalia as a very loud thud is heard prior to its (unimpressive) appearance! The claymation effects, naturally, are splendid and the results are delightful and striking enough (even at this modest scale, compared to the feature-length ALICE [1988], to which it's been attached on DVD) to definitely make me interested in checking out more of this celebrated animator's work.