|
 Little Otik (Otesanek) :: 6305957681
Description
| Product Description |
|
| Surrealist master Jan Svankmajer (FAUST, ALICE) brings a famous Czech legend eerily to life in the darkly hilarious cautionary tale of LITTLE OTIK. An ordinary couple, Karel and Bozena, are unable to conceive a child. When Karel digs up a tree root and whittles something vaguely resembling a human baby, Bozena's maternal longings transform the stump into a living creature with a (literally) monstrous appetite that can't be met with baby formula. Svankmajer brilliantly mixes his wicked humor with his subversive politics and love of mythology into a stunning live-action fable for our times. This Edition also features Svankmajer's surrealist THE FLAT Editorial Descriptions are usually submitted by the manufacturers, publishers and authors. Contact us if you are one of them, and wish to change the above description. |
Reviews
Customer feedback
|
|
Voting |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Author: Guest
This is a film about babies and food. It depicts graphic images of food in a rather unappetizing manner but conveys hard truths about food in an unpleasant context. In a grotesque erruption in the perception of food as potentially repulsive, we have here a baby that demands flesh, including human flesh in growing amounts.
Little Otik is born to an Eastern European family living in a flat. These people are not rich but seem to live in a sort of socialist setting with good medical and welfare provisions. The blonde mother to be is rather attractive but she and her husband are both infertile.
Obsessed with children, the husband gives the wife a log of wood as a baby substitute and this turns into a cooing, gurgling monster. You will never see babies in quite the same way after you've seen this film.
The neighbours of this couple are very decent but their daughter starts spying on the pregnancy and why the expectant couple seem so secretive about the kind of baby they have. She unravels the secret but can only relate the mostrosity of the situtation to herself - by reading a children's story aloud that parallels the real life events.
Everything is graphical and surreal - a fairy tale with the most hideous outcomes coming true. In the end, I don't really care too much about whether the film actually needs a decisive conclusion or makes too much sense - it is all done with a lot of thought, attention to detail and the script is simple and delightfully human (in an interesting alien tongue).
The whole thing is a sort of "What if" writ large and the scenes are often shocking and grotesque though the monster cries and shrieks like any ordinary baby, no matter how large it gets.
Metaphorically the monster represents children who refuse to grow up or demand too much; an exploration of the parent/offspring relationship; how food can be consuming in many senses of the word.
I found the main character - the little blonde neighbour's daughter very captivating. She is so sensible, inscrutable, clever and caring and knows exactly what's on everyone's mind and that mischief is fun. The old paedophile who keeps on trying to grab her becomes one of her prime victims, thanks to the monster and she knows exactly how to lure him. There are fetishtic close ups of lips, feet, food and associated items emphasising textures and latent greed which is somewhat unnerving yet draws you in. The visuals are of course inimitable to Svankmajer.
Really strange, sharp, bold. Not everyone will like this film but it is literally "food for thought" and pretty awesome in its matter of fact brutality, ironic humour and out of this world quality. This is one of a kind - though perhaps with shades of a former US film about a man eating, talking, indoor plant and a dark experimental film I saw of an ill treated child, growing for himself a grandmother by planting a seed in dirt.
|
Author: Guest
Karel and Bozena are an infertile couple--while cutting down a tree Karel pulls up a root that resembles a human baby--as a good natured gesture he modifies it to form an even stronger resemblance and presents it to his wife--who goes off the deep end acting as if it were a real baby. Somehow--after Bozene fakes a pregnancy--Little Otik comes to life. Cute in a bizarre way at first--Little Otiks voracious appetite and rapid growth soon turn him into a monstrous cat and human eater.
The real star of the story isn't any of these characters though-it's Alzbetka played by Kristina Adamcova--a precocious girl who often seems to be the only character with any real awareness--though somewhat misguided as she seeks to save Little Otik--at almost any cost.
The movie is probably a little longer than it should have been-and ends rather abruptly.
Probably worth buying if you're a Svankmajer fan--but should probably only be rented by those with a casual interest
BTW--the meals prepared by Alzbetas mother have got to be some of the most unappetizing I've ever seen--not sure if that's pertinent-maybe Little Otik felt the same way about the cuisine
Though there's one scene where a social worker is killed by Little Otik--all in all this is not a horror movie--a little gore as in animal and human remains--I doubt I'd let my grandchildren watch this movie--but for teenagers it should be ok
A few brief shots of Alzbetka might give a pedophile some cheap thrills--but nothing graphic
|
Author: Guest
LITTLE OTIK, or OTESÃNEK, is a feature length movie by Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer. With plot synopses using phrases like `bizarre fantasy' and considering Svankmajer's creds - he's been a member of the Prague Surrealist Group since 1969 - I'm not sure what I expected, or what I should have expected. Razor-sliced eyeballs and people tumbling through mirrors, the typical surrealist stuff, might have been a start. Or maybe something a little closer in spirit to a Svankmajer 1969 short (THE FLAT) that's included on this dvd. That one is about a young fellow in a humble hut who's trying to eat a meal while rocks tumble out of the faucet and his hands melt through the top of a wooden table.
What I didn't quite expect was a coherent narrative dressed here and there with stop-action and traditional, albeit somewhat choppy, flat animation. In an on-line interview with Svankmajer the director describes Otesánek as "a topical version of the Faust myth: a rebellion against nature and the tragic dimension of that rebellion." Okay. Maybe. Whatever. LITTLE OTIK introduces us to a typical middle-class couple who, unfortunately, are both infertile. One day the husband unearths a tree root, notes its resemblance to a human figure, and soon the wife is ungoing a false pregnancy and making sure that Little Otik is swaddled, powdered, and varnished periodically.
I suppose an American movie would try to give us a why, but this movie is content to accept without question that after nine months Little Otik is suddenly very much alive - and voraciously hungry. Besides the parents, who are cleverly able to hide the `newborn' in plain sight, precocious 10-year-old Alzbeta (Kristina Adamcová) is the only other person who seems to realize what's going on. If you're like me and are a little leery when words like `bizarre' and `surreal' are connected to foreign movies be at ease. I wouldn't even worry much about that `rebellion against nature' stuff. LITTLE OTIK is a gentle, funny, and intelligent little horror film.
|
Author: Guest
I knew I had to see this movie when I saw a picture of Little Otik, the misshapen cannibal log baby! I expected it to be an strange romp through fairy tales and stop motion, similar to Svankmeyer's other movies like ALICE and FAUST [Which i love]. And it was... only LITTLE OTIK was a little less zany, was more plot-driven, and had fewer stop motion sequences. So I didn't like it was much as FAUST, but it was still unbelievable.
Other reviews can fill you in on the plot if you really need to hear about it, but basically a childless couple "gives birth" to a piece of wood shaped like a baby. The wood baby comes alive...and boy does it like to eat.
LITTLE OTIK's tone is humorously dreary, in an understated way. I especially appreciated the kitchen table scenes where the mother forces her family to eat nasty soup. Jan Svankmeyer really loves to accentuate slurping and belching noises, too. These are some of the most disgusting meal scenes I have ever seen in a movie.
While this movie has more dialogue than a typical Svankmeyer film, much of the story is still told through pictures rather than words. I found a lot of the pregnancy imagery to be pretty well-done, like the juxtaposition of pictures from the little girl's sex-ed book with footage of the father cutting down the tree which will become Otik. You don't realize the significance of that montage until after Otik is born, then it all makes sense.
There are a few negative sides to the movie. For instance, I wasn't such a big fan of the parts where the girl reads the fairy tale out loud we see pictures of it. A similar device worked in Alice but was kind of needless here, since no one watching the movie would really need the plot spelled out for them, at least not in such detail. I mean, all we need to know is that there's a legend, that the girl is familiar with it, and that the cabbage patch will play a big part in the story. Now, if the folk tale had been shown in stop motion, I would have loved it!!
Also, I got a little weary of the constant close ups, especially of peoples mouths. And as others have noted, the movie ran about 20 minutes too long. Probably some of the pregnancy footage in the first act could have been edited.
Overall my criticisms are few! I'm glad I saw this movie and would definitely recommend it to other Svankmeyer fans!! Enjoy this one on me.
|
Author: Guest
Rivals his "Faustus" but more accessible to a wider audience. The storyline is fairly straightforward: a barren couple somehow transform a wooden tree root into an insatiably ravenous baby-creature which eats everything in sight and keeps getting bigger and bigger.
The subtext, as reflected in among other things the closeups of food going down human throats throughout the movie, is somewhat Buddhist: the little hungry monster is really just a metaphor for that equally bottomless pit of human desire/ego in all of us, which also wishes to gobble up everything it can.
Svankmejer weaves in some deft social satire here, playing on the pathological romanticization of having babies that is especially strong in pre-feminist present-day Czech society but endemic in all societies, a pathological romanticization which becomes obsession and madness when its actualization is thwarted by nature.
Along with Svankmejer's richly imaginative, trademark surrealism there is some beautiful cinematography and stop-animation here which makes this movie as visually fascinating as it is thought-provoking. This man simply has no equal. It is staggering to imagine what he could produce if he had even a fraction of Steven Spielberg or George Luca's resources and top billing---since both of those directors have about a fraction of his talent and vision.
|
Send to Friend
Send to friend
|
|
