Present in person at the Rotterdam Film International Festival, Jan Svankmajer was honored with a very fair exhibition dedicated to him. Not only that: he showed his ' Surviving Life ', his first feature an again after an absence of more than five years.
A tragic but often very funny look at the human spirit through dreams and the practice of psycho-analysis, "survivor life" is not only a treat for fans of Svankmajer, but almost a general perspective as the audience score 4.1 out of 5 (after four projections sold-out) proves.
If so what? Read on...
The Story.
Eugene is a former clerks, apparently happy in his marriage and boring Office job. But this changes when he began having very vives and bizarre dreams, featuring a beautiful woman dressed in red.
Instead of trying to get rid of these dreams, Eugene wants to experience many of them, so he enrolled for a psychoanalyst to try and explain what is happening. Their efforts are successful and Eugene gets to spend more time with the woman in red, but it dangerously risks becoming addicted to his dreams and life successor, that he lives within them...
Film:
People unfamiliar with unusual brand of cinema and humor need Svankmajer nor look further than the minutes of the opening of "surviving life" experience both. In them, Svankmajer appears in person, apologizing for the use of stop-motion animation of the film. It is a choice made for artistic reasons for him but, as he explains, "production failed to money and it's too expensive to do as a true film."
And this statement sets the tone for the rest of the film, which shows a character on the road of self-destruction in a story that would be almost unbearably tragic if she has not told deadpan smoothly.
The protagonist Eugene is played by Jan Svankmajer itself, or more specifically by animation of his photographs. Anchor the normal audience in two worlds, which are sometimes abstract as were Gilliam for Monty Python animations.
Although the story is surprisingly coherent and targeted. Research his dreamworld Eugene is quite plausible itself and one fun puzzle to solve. By Eugene tale, front and center: the Visual imagination are important but never "escape" with the film.
It would have been easy for Svankmajer show as real life real life world and the dreamworld as his signature surrealist stop-motion animation, but it is something more interesting: early on, he mixes his styles for both worlds. This allows collection Eugene reality sometimes also bizarre that are his dreams and in this way Svankmajer can play with parallel images without them forced or obvious research.
An example: featured strongly in the plot are visits Eugene de for a psychoanalyst, who are enjoyable to follow if you know something about the theories of Freud and Jung. Ideas like "Oedipus complex", "super-ego" "anima" and others are used, and it helps if you know what is to be spoken. But if you don't, sessions are not boring with the permission of the portraits of Freud and Jung on the wall behind the doctor, constantly siffle, cheering and even fights the other whenever their work get mentioned. This occurs even if the sessions take place in the "real" world
But Svankmajer obviously calls into question the very notion of reality. For what is true in the movie anyway, especially an animation? Two worlds in "surviving life" watch as surreal and creative, and more like dreams "creation Christopher Nolan" ultra-detailed environments ever did.
Ultimately, you tend to choose the reality that you consider to be the most real sense. This makes the journey of Eugene and choice more difficult but also more rewarding to follow.
Conclusion:
Weird without alienating, his studies without being haughty and heartfelt without being sentimental (too), "Surviving Life" is a psychoanalytically tour dreams of a person in distress.
Sometimes quite poignant and funny sometimes shamefully.
Definitely recommended!
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