Lunacy
Jun 20, 2012
(Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 2005, 35mm, 118 min)
The title Lunacy is a fitting summary of what this startling film achieves - turning the idea of madness inside out and upside down and right side up and out again. Jean, whose greatest fear is imprisonment in the madhouse to which his late mother was committed, is invited by a new friend to experience a new sort of asylum. In between stop-motion glimpses of cuts of meat behaving as humans, we follow Jean as he descends into Sade’s castle, a mental hospital where the staff are behind bars and the inmates run free. As Jean is forced to confront his terrors, he drags the viewer down with him in an adventure that blurs political lines between madness and sanity until logical escape is impossible.
Our Jan Svankmajer series is sponsored by the Center for Czech Education and Culture.
