Happy Spoopyween

  So my overall reaction to the movies we watched?

  Much of what we watched was disturbing, weird, creepy, or dark. And most of those were animations that made a statement. There was the surrealist art that was prohibited by the Nazis, labeled as "degenerate art", for being Un-German and grotesque in nature.

The supposedly "Jewish" nature of all art that was indecipherable, distorted, or that represented "depraved" subject matter was explained through the concept of degeneracy, which held that distorted and corrupted art was a symptom of an inferior race." -Wikipedia

  Films like Street of Crocodiles and The Hand brought important messages through morbid styles. As Jose said on Dadaism, the surrealist and Dada movement were created to surpass and defy the limits of traditional artistic styles that called for perfection and stagnancy, as well as symbolize and comment on certain societal issues at the time.

  So to start off, I'm gonna write on Ruka(The Hand). This was my favorite film we watched, being the funniest and cutest film we watched. Artistically speaking, I have to commend Trnka for his ability to use lighting, angles, and motions to communicate emotions in a figure with no facial expressions.

  Throughout it, I appreciated his clever methods of symbolizing the Czechoslovak communist power and censorship over the artist. The Hand's power over the poor guy, the greatest symbol being when he is "literally" turned into a puppet of the state, being lured into the strings of the one of the big hands. No image could've been more clear in its message of censorship and suppression of artistic freedom.

  The next film I'm gonna write on is Jan Svankmajer's Dimensions of Dialogue. Arcimbolo-esque heads made of various objects, one of food, one of metal, and one of stationary, all devour, break down, and regurgitate each other until they are all identical, and then proceed to duplicate one another, making exact copies. This represents dialogue's power in turning a society to bland strict rules that call for everything to be the same; this is, of course, commenting on actual political systems at the time such as the Nazi regime and Communism. 

  The next section was much more straightforward. 2 clay humans, one a female and one a male, get it on. 

  They merge and dissolve into a pile of rustling bubbling clay, their orgasming faces popping up sporadically to remind you that they are indeed having sweet sweet intercourse. After they are done, they are left with the results of their sexual experience. A blob of clay, meant to represent a baby, goes up to each of the parents, only to be rejected their parental love. The two figures, now angry at each other over who shall get ownership of the baby blob, scratch at each other and break each other apart in a violent display of aggression, until they reduced to but a messy pile of play-dough. Typical marital conflict.

 
And now this...

  So I'm gonna jump on the bandwagon unfortunately, and say what in the hell was this? 

 

"Like most of their films, the Brothers Quay employ a more musically grounded structure in place of a straightforward literal narrative in Street of Crocodiles."

-Wikipedia                

  

  Yeah, I'm not a fan of that. Especially when the music and mood are eerie soundtracks, with creepy dolls for characters. I mean visually, it was great. I don't immediately hate creepy styles, but the style, in all its aesthetically beautiful horror visuals, felt so empty by the end of the movie. 

  But I'll attempt to interpret as much as I can. Obviously, the dolls are the oppressors, the main puppet the oppressed. The way they rearrange his insides and take off his head, their slow creepy approaching, all serve to make them more menacing than a puppet should be. The fact that their heads are clearly empty, communicates a sense of mechanical mindless behavior, controlled by an unseen force. The screws, unscrewing themselves also imply an unseen force, furthering the disturbing insanity of the scenario

  All in all, the films we watched were less "entertainment", and more "art". They were expressive, bold, conveying dark warnings and commentary on the problems faced by the times they were made.