Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer rivals his Western contemporaries David Lynch, Terry Gilliam and David Cronenberg as an explorer of the surreal, a challenger of the status quo, a visualist of the unique.
Having embraced the sexually-specific lives of his liberated countrypeople in 1996’s Spiklenci slasti (Conspirators Of Pleasure), Svankmajer went the next step and explored the rich, psychological themes associated with parenthood in his moving, horrific nightmare Otesanek (Little Otik).
Karel (Jan Hartl) and Bozena (Veronika Silkova) are an upwardly-mobile couple who learn they cannot have children. Bozena is shattered, and Karel struggles with his role as husband in an emotional situation totally foreign to him. While excavating a plot of land he has procured, Karel removes a tree root that bears a striking resemblance to a newborn child and that, with some trimming and a coat of varnish, may appease the moribund Bozena until nature graces them with the human bundle of joy they both desire.
But the grotesque piece of wood soon develops a life of its own and, via Svankmajer’s use of stop-motion animation and less-than-subtle close-up camera angles and first-person shots, Little Otik (as the timber has become known) becomes a ravenous, manipulative, destructive force that results in patricide, paedophilic retribution and a general implosion of socially-acceptable psychological behaviour.
At times a film that is mind-boggling in its ambition and vision, Little Otik is also a gruelling film to watch. It features jumpcuts, direct-to-camera sequences and character explorations that are absurd and compellingly bizarre. The blind, motherly devotion of Silkova’s Bozena is Hitchcockian in its layered meanings and sick devotion; the shattering realisation Hartl’s Karel must endure as creator of Otik is heartbreaking; as the small child who first fears then adopts Otik, Kristina Adamcova is truly disturbing.
But undoubtedly, the star is Otik himself. Not since Yoda in the Star Wars sequels has an inanimate object provided such focus on-screen. While never discounting the commitment of the actors that helped to bring the little root to life, Svankmajer’s unflinching commitment to providing a tangible personality to his title character is masterful, unique and undeniably perverse.
Many will hate this film (as I came close to doing on first viewing); it is a confronting movie to watch. But it’s images, themes and characterisations will stay with you. Little Otik is as close to a cinematic interpretation of a bad dream as one may ever want to find.
