Gosh, I think this is the best Jan Svankmajer short I've seen yet. It is bewilderingly hysteric, hilariously slapstick, and disturbingly violent all at once. Svankmajer also mixes many different forms of animation fluently and breathlessly, providing an age-old story (well, this isn't strictly Punch and Judy, but the format is) with a cinematic adaptation that provides it space and movement outside of the capabilities of real life puppeteering.
After a carnival-like opening (leading possibly into the Carnivalesque nature of the show) of monkeys playing music, a puppet brings a live guinea pig onto the stage and starts feeding him. Another puppet, fatter, wants the guinea pig, and tries to buy it off of the first. The two cannot agree on a price, so the fight begins--to terrible but amazingly funny results.
Every detail of this short is amazing. The pictures of women, death, weapons, and religious symbols pasted on the cardboard cut-out reality, the movement of both the story and the figures, the various forms of animation leading into others, the sense of the puppets being watched by more than just the audience, and the moment when the puppets start breaking down and falling apart as a result of their own violence are all awe-inspiring. The ending, where the puppets die in a coffin together and the hands disappear under a destroyed staging, reveals a sort of fatalism not immediately apparent in the rest of the show. The movie itself is incredibly dark, but you'll find yourself giggling through all of it.
--PolarisDiB
After a carnival-like opening (leading possibly into the Carnivalesque nature of the show) of monkeys playing music, a puppet brings a live guinea pig onto the stage and starts feeding him. Another puppet, fatter, wants the guinea pig, and tries to buy it off of the first. The two cannot agree on a price, so the fight begins--to terrible but amazingly funny results.
Every detail of this short is amazing. The pictures of women, death, weapons, and religious symbols pasted on the cardboard cut-out reality, the movement of both the story and the figures, the various forms of animation leading into others, the sense of the puppets being watched by more than just the audience, and the moment when the puppets start breaking down and falling apart as a result of their own violence are all awe-inspiring. The ending, where the puppets die in a coffin together and the hands disappear under a destroyed staging, reveals a sort of fatalism not immediately apparent in the rest of the show. The movie itself is incredibly dark, but you'll find yourself giggling through all of it.
--PolarisDiB