Rectangular_businessman
This beautiful short made by the Brothers Quay (directors of the great animated short "Street of Cocodriles") It's a captivating tale about a master and his disciple. This may sound as something very simple, but the Brothers Quay always manage to create a unique, fascinating world, with strange but very interesting characters, and strange and surreal situations as well. The animation looks beautiful and stylish, just like the other films directed by the Brothers Quay, and this little homage to Jan Svankmajer definitely worth a look, specially if you are fan of filmmakers as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton.I liked this short a lot. I recommend it to anyone.
Eumenides_0
Having recently become acquainted with Jan Svankmajer's work, I found it a wonderful piece of coincidence that I should discover the Quay brothers, brilliant stop-motion animators in their own right, through this short movie. Perhaps not a coincidence: they owe a lot to Svankmajer and this homage shows it.In Prague, a puppeteer takes in an apprentice. He opens his brain, empties it and symbolically fills with a book; evidently this is the imagination and knowledge the Quays have received from this master. This is the basic plot.But I'll argue we can also find a bigger world of inspirations in this movie. The puppeteer, with the book on his head is clearly a reference to Giuseppe Arcimboldo's famous picture, Librarian. At one point we see the cabinet reflected in a crystal ball, much like an M. C. Escher painting. And the dolls and puppets are themselves throwbacks to the early surrealist movies. This is a lovely celebration of weird art throughout history.As for the movie itself, it's inventive and sometimes creepy. The Quays have a talent for creating surreal imagery that exudes mystery and dread. This is a movie to delight in its strangeness. Still, it looks more like an introduction than something in its own right. I certainly hope the Quay brothers have more to offer.
inkybrown
This is an excellent introduction to the work of the Quay Brothers and stop-motion animation. It is enjoyable for fans of Svankmajer, but also for fans of the painter Arcimboldo, whose paintings and characters are featured heavily in this short; most notably the Librarian, which is brought to 3D life as the lead puppet, and also characters from The Seasons, The Elements, and others: Vertumnus, Summer, Fire, and so forth. In fact, a subtitle in the film is Portrait of Svankmajer a la Arcimboldo. Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 - 1593) was an Italian painter known for creating portraits composed of fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books, all arranged in a fashion that constitutes a portrait of a character which is represented by all those diverse elements.
rowandt
The Quay brothers style is at it's best here, with beautiful, surreal puppets telling the story of Czech animator Jan Svankmajer's life. The expressionist, stop-motion puppet work is perfectly suited to tell the story of Svankmajer's own surreal film-making. Split into several sections, the puppets (one expressing Svankmajer himself) act out the scenes, with maze-like, unidentifiable sets, dancing pins and a mesmerising soundtrack. All these elements combine into a treat for the eyes, and a severe hammering to the brain. The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer is a marvellous short, particularly of interest to fans of Svankmajer himself.
AD
