SYNOPSICS
Sílení (2005) is a Czech movie. Jan Svankmajer has directed this movie. Jan Tríska,Pavel Liska,Anna Geislerová,Martin Huba are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2005. Sílení (2005) is considered one of the best Animation,Comedy,Drama,Horror movie in India and around the world.
A horror movie testing two approaches to running an insane asylum - absolute freedom versus control and punishment - within the context of a world that combines the worst of both. Jean Berlot, a young man subject to a nightmare of being forced into a straitjacket by two orderlies, is befriended by a marquis. At the marquis's estate, Jean witnesses a black Mass, buries someone alive, and is invited to try preventive therapy. He's willing to enter a sanatorium because he believes he can rescue a young woman from there who has told him that the real director and staff of the clinic are locked in the basement. Jean conspires with her to set them free: the horrors have only begun.
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Sílení (2005) Reviews
Classic European cinema
I recently saw this film at the Jeonju film festival in Korea. It was by far the best film I saw all weekend. Selini is like a combination of Godard, Herzog and classic Czech animation- the kind of committed and convincing political film making that is increasingly rare these days. In his introduction Svankmajer compares the excesses of extreme reactionary and liberal regimes and argues that we currentlycombine the worst of both worlds in encouraging people to do whatever they want whilst relying on punishment and fear to keep them under control. The plot (based on an Edgar Allen Poe short story) is simple- an innocent traveller bears witness to the lunatics taking over the asylum. But the nightmarish atmosphere of confusion and fear, enhanced by gruesome stop motion animation between scenes, is both compelling, disturbing and extremely effective in communicating the directors ideas. The acting is committed and convincing and the story has, like the decline into madness, a chilling inevitability about it. The film uses this simple story to explore more challenging philosophical concepts. You don't have to be a fan of art-house cinema to understand and enjoy this exciting movie. 9/10
Crazy, grotesque, philosophical horror
The Lunatics I attended the Slovak premiere (February 22nd) of Jan Svankmajer's latest cinematic work, the movie called Lunatics (ílení). Jan Svankmajer, the famed surrealist artist/animator/filmmaker is back in full force with a generic horror film with "all the deficiencies the genre entails". Though the movie is mainly live actors it contains the trademark surreal animations you would come to expect from Svankmajer. These animations (crawling flesh, rolling eyeballs, bovine tongues dancing in beer glasses, you name it, it's there) cut in between scenes fulfill the role of visual music and help illustrate the progress of madness on screen. Svankmajer's intro really says it all; this philosophical horror movie is "an infantile homage to the writings of Edgar Alan Poe" with "a few subversive ideas borrowed from Marquis de Sade". The movie's basic premise concerns the great ideological dispute of how best to run a lunatic asylum on the one hand you have the concept of total freedom and on the other the conservative ideal of discipline and punishment. According to Svankmajer there is a third way that manages to combine all the negative aspects of these two approaches and it is the reality we live in... The movie starts a bit slowly, the pacing is really uneven and could have used a bit of editing, but then Svankmajer wouldn't have been able to let the Marquis (the impeccable Jan Triska) recite director's favourite "blasphemous" passages from de Sade. Anyway the young hero Berlot suffers from live nightmares (in which lunatic asylum workers try to put him in a straight jacket) that end in destruction of all furniture around him; he befriends the Marquis who pays for the damage in the inn where Berlot spend the night on his way from his mother's funeral. After Berlot witnesses Marquise's libertine ways, sadomasochistic orgies, blasphemies, cataleptic shock and a live burial he is nonplussed enough to be convinced by Marquis that the best way to face his own fears of lunatic asylum is to submit himself to one, run by Marquise's friend Dr. Murlloppe. In the asylum run according to the principles of absolute freedom (patients running around with scissors, bobsledding down the stairs etc) he meets the girl who involuntary took part in Marquise's sex orgies and she tells him that Marquise and Dr. Murlloppe were patients in the asylum as well but led a revolt against the reign of the psychiatrist Dr. Coulmiere (great Slovak actor Martin Huba), who remains trapped in the asylum's basement along with his staff... At this point the movie has griped you and doesn't let go until the predictable but great end. All in all, this is a great horror movie, if by horror you mean a bizarre and surreal grotesque... you will laugh and marvel and think, because this is the type of a movie that allows you to do just that. 9/10.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World by Jan Svankmajer
Jan Svankmajer is a filmmaker who started out in animation, and made dozens of short films, most of them in surrealist settings and modes, and it was only when he got into feature films that he used live-action a lot more. This might explain why when he directs live-action you may not see certain usual things in movies, like with characters talking to the camera when in conversation (not sure if this breaks the 180-degree rule or not), or in a couple of awkward edits or his penchant for close-ups on mouths speaking words. And yet with each passing film I've come across from him- Alice, Faust, Little Otik- he gets a little better each time around. Now with Lunacy, his latest feature, it's by far his most assured and confidently insane direction (and rightfully so for this!) and featuring only minimal stop-motion animation. Thankfull, this animation is with pieces of meat put to piano honky tonk music. But aside from the direction being stronger, and Svankmajer's actors being better than usual, it's such a thematically rich film that only a surrealist could pull off: one might say 'what does this mean or what's the symbol of the body doing that or that piece of food or the tar and feather or 13 punishments?' Secretly, Svankmajer's response, probably akin to Bunuel, would be 'does it ultimately matter?' In the scope of Lunacy, a film based on works by Poe and Marquis de Sade (what parts are which will only be known to those who've read the specific Poe stories, or are familiar enough with Sade, though I can likely guess the latter's influence in the last fifteen minutes), it's about the simple question: who's sane or not, and what defines sanity? Our protagonist, whom we think is the sanest of all, has recurring nightmares of men coming into his room at night with a straight-jacket ready to take him away and then his super-violent reaction. Is he, perhaps, any less wacko than the Marquis, or his fellow Doctor with the fake beards? Well... maybe, comparatively, he is saner, but the question still stands amid a matter of degree; towards the end we're faced with the question of sanity in the face of "corporal punishment." Maybe the point is akin to the old George Carlin line about life being a freak-show and being born is just getting a ticket for the ride. Jean (Pavel Liska) is on his way back from his mother's funeral and is "befriended" (very loose quotes) by a Marquis (perfectly cast Jan Triska, definitely one of the creepiest of all screen villains) who by horse and buggy in present day takes him to his castle where Jean witnesses "blasphemous" acts at night with the Marquis and a bunch of naked ladies in a barn with an over-nailed cross. One thing leads to another- including a presumed suffocation by banana- and the Marquis oddly convinces Jean to come to the sanitarium to get some voluntary 'assistance'. Once there, it's a total upside-down cake where the lunatics have taken over, so to speak and literally, as the Marquis and Dr. Murloppe run rough-shod as the real doctors are locked in the basement, tarred and feathered with a bunch of chickens. So much of this is rich and densely packed material that it kind of goes by simply. Ironic then (or maybe as a good old told-with-a-straight-faced joke) that Svankmajer makes an intro before the film about how "this is not art, art is probably dead anyway" when his film is just that: whacked out film-art to the tune of classic horror, as the genre goes, and as classic satire. This is full-bodied satire throughout, even when the style might suggest otherwise; just watch that super-crazy (however somewhat lucid) scene where the Marquis and doctor stage a reading and a kind of still-life of sorts in recreating a painting with the loonies- how the camera slides along those clapping hands and the Marquis reciting the words so eloquently. It's like a momentary glimpse at the blinding power of empowerment, of everyone in the room including Jean with getting poor Charlotte off the stage. While there are tendencies for it to get nasty (just in those 13 Sadistic punishments, no pun intended), the focus is always clear and powerful... and ultimately very funny. Did I mention the meat seq-ways? This is just by itself extraordinary work and adds to the confounded but amazing artistry in the project. So much work was put in to tell these little stories of pieces of meat forming together, tongues and eyeballs, meat being tarred and feathered and humping, meat getting pecked at by chickens, etc. The combination of this and the fantastic live-action propel it up to being Svankmajer's best I've seen yet, and by the end we're left with whatever interpretation we want: does the meat represent the people going whatever way they will to form new shapes, or is commentary on what's going on in the story, or is it just eye-popping animation for the hell of the entire theme of lunacy all over the place? Why show any of this dark and despairing philosophical and psychological and physical things? Svankmajer's answer, undoubtedly, would be "why not?" A+
the art house horror film of the year!!
I just saw this film at the Montreal fantasia film festival. And this being Svankmajer's most recent film, I jumped for tickets. Absolutely amazing. Something of a political comment, the film show's us to ways of running an insane asylum. I have always loved Jan Svankmajer for his use of macabre animation (using raw meat, bones and eye balls). And it's use in context with 'Lunacy' is chilling. Truly one of the best horror films I've see all year. It's not the sort of horror that is entertaining to watch or bring your girlfriend. But if you love films and your looking for a horror film that will keep you thinking...then find a way to see this film.
Choose Your Insanity
Edgar Allen Poe. The Marquis de Sade. Jan Svankmajer. If you're familiar with any of those people, and enjoy their work (or even if you don't enjoy it but you still understand what they do), then you are pretty much obligated to see this movie. If you like all those artists, then you've probably already seen it and this review is redundant. Jan Svankmajer's job in this movie is to take the theme of the lunatics running the asylum to a new extreme--hopefully to the limit, as I wouldn't want to watch what anybody would try to do further. A young man named Jean Berlot has recurring dreams of being stuck in an insane asylum, and unfortunately for him these dreams attract the attention of a mysterious Marquis who's out to help "cure" a new friend. The Marquis, however, has his own, let's call 'em, "extreme philosophies." If the storyline isn't enough, the transitions between scenes are animated with pounds of animal meat. Jan Svankmajer calls this his horror movie, and once again he shows a large amount of craftiness behind his impressions. The first two acts of the movie are so absurd they're mostly comedic, but the third act is surprisingly disturbing. You'd be surprised which characters you end up caring about and which characters you end up hating. In the end it becomes a question of how to choose your own insanity... because in a world where insanity exists sanity seems to take fifth pier. One of the more revealing parts of this movie involves its anachronism. The wooden sets are filled with timeless pieces, the gray weather can be representative or give off a feeling of a period piece, and the Marquis and Jean's journey in the coach crosses Bubonic plague-style imagery with freeways. What's more terrifying about this scene when one thinks about it later on is how even outside of the insane asylum there doesn't seem to be any sense of normalcy. Which is one of the things that is hard about this movie. Jean's delusions and his light obsessiveness makes him an untrustworthy narrator in a world where it seems like every single character harbors some maladjustment. Structurally speaking, it's unproductive to make insane characters populate an insane world without any norm for the audience to build on. For this foundation, Svankmajer seems to rely entirely on the audience, which works amazingly well. Watching this movie, for me, was even more enjoyable while hearing the laughs and moans of the people in the theatre around me. However the real drama in this film seemed to come from my own sense of values and reality desperately trying to find a handhold within the philosophies projected within the narrative. In the end the subjectivity of reality becomes more an issue of choosing one's own insanity. --PolarisDiB