Foreverisacastironmess This is damned peculiar... I've recently rediscovered the excellent macabre work of Mr.Jan Svankmajer, an artiste of twisted, marvellous dark surreality to rival the Brothers Quay themselves. His style is somewhat similar to theirs, only without a conscience! Unlike the fantastical Quays, I would definitely describe a lot of his animations as more on the 'creepy' side. I haven't seen that great a number of his short films as yet, but I'd say this is probably going to be my favourite one. I can't imagine I'll be seeing anything that'll click with me as intensely as this. Would that I could only have half as much fun with every short film's attempts at the ghastly and unnatural that I've seen.. The frightfully potent stylistic surrealness of this brilliant short simply does not compute and feels fundamentally incorrect, and in a way that's none too easy to put into words. A vision of which the imagery belongs more in the realm of hazy dark fantasy than any kind of conventional reality, it's just way too inscrutable for mere paltry words to encompass, too impossible to place. It really does defy any descriptions... There's no sense of balance, and a sense of(now familiar) wrongness, that for whatever reason sits so well with me. It's like looking at a crazed artist's nightmare come to life, or an expression that's been pulled and twisted through a thick shroud of unearthly surrealness until it somehow becomes something to me, dreamlike, and for what it is, flawless. I find the blunt starkness and sheer lunacy of it oddly liberating and hypnotic. I could not help but be filled with wonder at the originality and hauntingly freaky style of it. ::: The sights in this are relatively Spartan and simple, but they're the kind that compels the viewer to try in vain to reach one definite answer as to what it all could possibly mean, but in my opinion that is not what mysterious and ethereal art such as this is all about. The unimaginative will probably just dismiss it outright as an amusing but meaningless collection of random kooky gags created by the repose of an active mind. But there's always a little more to feel and dwell upon, lurking in the symbology and portents. There's no dialogue, just the eccentric actions accompanied by ominous and stirring music as the rather cute young fellow embarks upon his misadventure in the oddball house of pain! I assume he died in some way at the end when his name was added to 'the list' of victims... I hope when the coroner's report came back in the cause of death was listed as "Art!" I personally found the whole thing to be more darkly absurd and comedic than anything frightening. Recommended if you love the awesome and unusual.

Lee Eisenberg In one of Czech director Jan Svankmajer's many surreal shorts, an unidentified man is trapped in a room where nothing seems to act normally. Whether it's silverware that won't pick up food, walls that won't support him, or anything else, this is an existentially delicious hell. What's the point of making movies like this, we may ask. Well, what's the point of anything? I guess that if nothing else, Svankmajer was just exercising his creativity and imagination. I would suspect that in the Eastern Bloc, he probably didn't have a lot of fancy technology to work with, but he had talent, and that's what counts. "Byt" (how's that word pronounced?) certainly shows that. I recommend it. Czech it out.

mkw-5 Great movie about madness and loneliness. I have seen only one Svankmajer film before this, it was "Down in the Cellar". It had some similar elements. This is much older. It reminded me of Beckett's "Film" and Polanski's "Tenant", from which the latter is in my opinion one of the greatest movies ever made. I don't know has Polanski got some inspiration from this? Anyway, comparing is stupid because these are all totally separate artistic achievements and all are great in themselves.This movie is really energic and full of ideas. It's bravely simple. This movie is really crazy, the guy is really hallucinating. You can't call this neurotic or paranoid anymore, this is truly psychotic. But it's funny, actually it's a comedy! I don't know where Svankmajer has got these ideas. But I know that if you would show this film in the army draft, you wouldn't have to go.

zardoz12 Svankmajer's first monochrome film, "The Flat" is about this late 1960's Czech everyman who has been literally flung into this dingy, primitive apartment. There he quickly discovers that reality does not work as it should; the man attempts to light a wood-fired stove, but water comes out, dousing the match; for no reason, the bare lightbulb begins swinging and lengthening it's cord, so it can bash a small hole in a brick wall, whereupon the light retracts into the ceiling. In the middle of the room there is a table with a meal (a boiled egg in a holder, soup, a tankard of beer, and a plateful of things that look like linked sausages.) The man sits down to eat, only to have the beer become a tiny doll's stein when he drinks it, then reverting to the (now-empty) tankard when he puts it down. He can't drink the soup, because suddenly the spoon has holes. He tries to break the egg, only to have it break the holder and fall through the table onto his foot, a painful experiance. The "sausages" are also inedible; they bend the fork prongs. The man then attempts to sleep in a bed, but it disintigrates into a large pile of sawdust. In the end, a man walks into the room in slow motion, holding a chicken and an axe. The protagonist takes the axe as the man glides back out through a second door. The door has no handle, so the everyman hacks it to pieces, only to find that it covers a wall. The wall is covered with names; the man adds his with a pencil.I went to the trouble of recounting most of the film to make a point, that this is an allegory of the secret police interrogations that went on after the Soviets reinvaded Czechoslovakia during the "Prague Spring" of 1968. In such an interrogation, the subject would be more and more disoriented by placing the person in a cell with no windows where the light (from a bare bulb) was eternally on, along with nonsensical questioning, irregular meal times, and bizarre arbitrary behavior by guards and interrogators. At the end of whatever time it took to break the prisoner, he/she would be forced to sign a confession, either written by the prisoner or concocted by the secret police. I suspect that the only reason that "Byt" survived was due to the literal-mindedness of Czech censors and the secret police.