The Comb

Unconventional in almost every way imaginable, this heavily stylized near-masterpiece of avant garde animation directly visits the depths of the human mind in this profound and slightly disturbing meditation on the magic of dreams. The colors pop, and the animation sparkles with perfection. By 1991, the Brothers Quay had flat out mastered the art of stop motion animation, because in this film, the animated characters' movements are so spot on and flawless that it's ridiculous. Whenever something moved, I felt like my jaw was going to drop because of how much obvious effort was put into such tiny details within the brief production.

This is easily the most dreamlike of the Brothers Quay films that I have seen so far as it accurately captures the unconscious mind. Arguably, this unconscious-mind-capturing can be found in all of the films produced by Stephen and Timothy Quay, but this film does it most directly by literally being about a dream!

the only real problem I had wit this great experimental short was how slow it felt at times. While their films are some of the most magical and beautiful of all time, I must admit that the greatest fault of the Brothers Quay is their ability to make their films unfortunately slow paced. While I was extremely engaged at certain points, a small fraction of my first viewing of "The Comb" featured no more than my mind wandering, pondering other topics, something that I never like happening while watching a film. So, warning, if you're impatient, the territory of the Brothers Quay's magnificent animations may not be one you should trespass.

Explaining an avant-garde film such as The Comb is like trying to explain the concept of colors to a person who has been blind since birth. The blind may conjure up their own ideas of what colors look like, but they cannot fully realize them. Such is the way of the avant-garde cinema. It simply cannot be explained through mere words due to its abstractness. In order to fully realize it, you must experience it. Viewing The Comb is like entering a nightmare netherworld unimaginable even in your darkest dreams. Much like a dream, it is difficult to explain in mere words. Like all avant-garde films, The Comb must be experienced first-hand to be fully realized. This film is set in a disturbing little world full of moth-eaten 19th century dolls, crooked passageways, rotted wood and trees and mazes of ladders leading to an other-worldly crimson sky. Surrealism is prominent throughout; it seems as if The Comb is a Salvador Dali painting animated to life. The dream scape presented in The Comb has few resemblances to the real world, as everything is given a nightmarish tilt. As in their other films, The Quays once again animate the inanimate and bring lifeless objects to creaky, jerky life.

The main character, if I may call it that, is a dirty, cracked porcelain doll who is intent on climbing a tower clustered by mazes of ladders and small passageways that all lead toward a blood-red sky. Periodically Intercut between the doll's difficult journey upwards is a woman tossing and turning in her bed, which is set in a grainy, Victorian-era room loaded with worn antiques. The brief scenes of this woman (circa 4 of the 18 minutes the film lasts) are live-action (a real human, no animation) and in B&W while the rest of the film occurs in the lushly colored netherworld made living through stop-motion animation. The woman appears to be having a nightmare which may be linked to the world the doll is struggling in. The actions of the woman echo into the doll's dream world and vice versa. At the end of the film, the relation between the doll and the sleeping woman is brought into perspective.

The Comb is very surreal and avant-garde, meaning it breaks from conventional film making practices. There is no dialogue, no narrative story, no named characters; just pure abstract avant-gardism. The nameless characters seem to be symbols, and their antics tell a story that is open to anyone's interpretation. I think The Comb expresses the relationship between Man and his Dreams. What we do in the 'real' world (displayed by the woman in bed) reverberates in our dreams (the doll's journey). I believe the woman in bed is dreaming everything that happens in the film.

There is no score, except for disjointed stabbing violins, scratches and indecipherable moaning, which adds to the already disturbing visuals. Like most avant-garde films, this will tap into your subconscious and have a strange, personal effect on you. Whenever I watch The Comb, I feel as if my life is put on hold for 18 minutes as I'm pulled into this enigmatic, surreal world. I have seen most of the Brothers Quay films and feel this is their second best, under their masterpiece The Street of Crocodiles. The Comb is highly recommended for fans of stop-motion animation, avant-gardism or just something different.