Surviving Life (Theory and Practice)

2010 psychoanalyticka komedie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A bearded gentlemen meets a beautiful woman in a dream and tries to discover a way to dream more so that he can be with her.

I've waited and waited for this to be available for me to watch and finally gave up and watched it on Youtube. Worth the wait? Absolutely! New Svankmajer should 1) be more of a regular thing and 2) should be celebrated as a holiday. This one seems very cheaply done. There's stop-motion, a lot more than in the last feature film, and a lot of the animation is cut-out stuff similar to the hilarious soccer short called "Manly Games" in this collection. This is very funny, too, and although I reckon the imagery and surrealistic asides would befuddle a lot of people, I couldn't keep the smile off my face while watching this. Half of this takes place in the main character's subconscious, the perfect setting for a surrealist like Svankmajer, but the conscious world isn't without the surreal touches. The main character spends a lot of his waking hours being psychoanalyzed, again perfect fodder for Svankmajer. The inside of the noggin is, after all, where all of his movies take place, isn't it? The odd visuals--chicken-headed folk, animated meat, a gigantic tongue, rolling apples, eggs, bananas, extracted teeth, antlered men, faucet-headed people, watermelons, flowers sprouting from women's heads--are easier to digest in this, like Svankmajer is picking and choosing from The Rudimentary Guide to Interpreting Dream Symbols or something. The psychological issue at the heart of the whole thing's been used enough to become a cinematic cliché, but none of that makes this any less fun. If you like your avant-garde animated movies on the playful side, this is definitely for you.

Leolo

1992 French movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Leo Lauzon's family is insane and dysfunctional. His grandfather attempts to kill him, and his siblings even have their own wing of an asylum. That's why he dreams his way out of his life, transforming himself through his writings into Leolo Lozone, the son of an Italian man who masturbated on a tomato that his mother later fell on top of. Yeah, I'm not sure about the science of that one either. He reaches adolescence and becomes sexually aware, discovering masturbation himself and fantasizing about an older neighbor named Bianca.

Forget the very solid performance by Maxime Collin as Leolo. And forget the lyrical and beautiful narration, the dreamy cinematography, and the couple Tom Waits songs used. I didn't need the literary script, the gradually episodic unfolding of this coming-of-age story. No, I was sold within the first ten minutes during a scene in which a guy enthusiastically ejaculates on some tomatoes. That scene could have lasted two hours and been enough for me. This movie has some really bizarre moments, perversely bizarre. But it succeeds because it allows you to connect to the characters no matter how strange their situations might be. This film consistently surprised me. It'll move along like a lullaby, leading the audience through a dream landscape, and then suddenly hit you with something funny, unexpected, and bizarre. I won't spoil, but there are scenes with meat, a grandfather, and a cat that are just wonderful. This reminded me at times of My Life as a Dog. I really didn't like the music that much, but I did start to wonder (too late unfortunately) whether or not each of the characters had his own music. That could explain why the soundtrack was so wildly uneven. There was gypsy music, throat singing, Tom Waits, silly French pop music, creepy ambient stuff. Like all good movies like this, this smoothly shifts from humorous to touching. This is a movie that I'll admit I didn't completely get this first time I watched it. Luckily, it's entertaining enough to eventually watch again.

A Winter Rates recommendation. And now I know where he got that "meat" idea.