Product Description

Studio: Zeitgeist Films Release Date: 02/20/2007

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74238 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-02-20
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Czech
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 118 minutes

Customer Reviews

A philosophical horror tale
In his introduction to the film inside the own film Jan Svankmajer compares modern societies with a lunatics assylum. The subject of " Lunacy " is essentially an ideological debate about how to rule an institution. " Basically there are two ways of managing an institution, and each equally extreme ": one looks at the absolute freedom; the other, the old-fashioned based on absolute rules and punishment. And there is also - he concludes - another one that combines both " and this is the mad-house in we're living today ". As the protagonist of the film, as artists nowadays, modern democracies seem to move between two chairs, to walk behind the fog.

Placed in the ninenteenth century rural France, " Lunacy " is freely inspired by a not very popular tale by E. A. Poe titled " The system of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether ", about a mental hospital ruled by their patients ( this is by lunatics ), and also by the decadentist and anticlerical criticism of the Marquis the Sade. We find too some references to the spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel ( for instance, in the scene in which the aeseptic and sadistic lead doctor of the asylum shows to her lover the content of a bizarre box and that the spectator never get to known ) so as another tribute to Poe in the scene of the therapeutic burial. The result is a satirical and thought-provoking surreal horror tale where Svankmajer conjugates grotesque, cool stop-motion animation, kinky sex, gothic horror imaginary, disturbing analogies, circular nigthmares, lunatics and meat puppets to built up a pessimistic political parable about mankind alienation and indecisiveness in industrializied societies.

I've heard some commentaries by Svankamajer fans dissapointed about " Lunacy " because it has not many animation sequences, as frequently many of their followers wait to find in his movies. It's true: the animated scenes, inserted in the film as macabre vignettes of surrealist imagination or sarcastic and philosophical graphic commentaries, hardly reach to be twenty minutes in all the whole film, but this doesn't avoid to place Svankmajer's last feature-length film as one of his finest and most subversive works.

Another disturbing and exquisite work by this genial and dark alchemist of the surreal.

Madness on madness
How to describe Svankmajer's films? They taunt the sense of reason, showing you that rationality doesn't go nearly all the places that imagination does, or that madness does.

Jean Berlot finds himself in a mental hospital, where the patients seem to be in charge and the keepers are just as mad. It hardly seems to matter who's on which side of the locked door. He witnesses bizarre transformations of people and chickens, satanic masses filled with thundering blasphemy, and torments being called treatments. Or does he? Which of these events appear only in his own mind?

It's never quite clear, and baffling interludes of stop-animation give only indistinct hints. There's a commentary and narrative in Svankmajer's creeping masses of flesh, throbbing but inanimate tissue, and dancing beef tongues, but for the life of me I can't be sure what it is.

I've liked other of Svankmajer's works better. Alice carries a clearer story, winding itself in a loose orbit around Lewis Carroll's beloved classic. Some of his shorts seem at least as clever and far more legible. Still, this appeals to a dark sense of wonder. If you consider linear storytelling to be over-rated, you might find a lot to enjoy in this one.

-- wiredweird

Creative Madness
Absolutely great movie, what else to expect from Svankmajer's creativeness and surreal imagery. Now add to the mixture: 2 Poe's obscure stories and De Sade's perversion. Wow, blasphemy, insanity, sex, introversion, revolution, are a few words to describe this excellent movie, all with the artistic and emotive touch from the master. I really don't want to extend the review, it will be much better if you watch it and came with your own personal interpretation, and don't loose a piece of mind in the process.