pleasure

Reading any of the books I've been assigned for my program is anaethemic to my rapidly evolving drinking habit ("I have to build up my tolerance! Czechs consume more beer per capita than blah blah blhahlahahahdfkenzzzzzzz.... what were we talking about?") so I've been watching films. Fuck yeah! This is the whole reason I'm doing this Prague thing anyway.

Warning: You are entering film geek territory, the land where I ruin everyone's fun and ramble on and on about things very few people care about.:1:

The first selection from my stack of brand-new Czech DVDs: Conspirators of Pleasure, directed by Jan Svankmejer, surrealist filmmaker who got his start doing animation and puppetry. Puppetry is actually very important and widely respected as an art form by the Czechs, and although Svankmejer definitely has an interest in (and a talent for) live-action filmmaking, his roots are clearly evident in his work. An interesting blend of the two, actually; the craftsmanship involved in this film is amazing, which is fortunate as there isn't a single line of dialogue, so the story is carried entirely by the images and sound design (a tactic not enough films explore).

As far as the content of the film goes, it's a very interesting look at fetishes and obsessions, and, more importantly, how these fetishes affect interpersonal relationships. This theme encompasses a broad spectrum of relationships: neighbors, spouses, professional/business, television.:2: Of course, one of the reviewers quoted in the DVD's insert (I spit at thee, Steven Holden of the New York Times!) has to draw a connection to "Life Under Communism!!!!" which in essence nails the film to a ideological plank and severs it from any broader context:

But Mr. Svankmajer's vision is much more than a surrealistic rendering of standard Freudian notions of repression and sublimation. Encountering one another through the day, these obsessive ritualists exchange the sly, knowing glances of conspirators in a political plot. Not only do they recognize one another as ''freaks,'' to use contemporary parlance, but their unquenchable perversity also unites them in a shared resistance to the puritanical conformism of Eastern European culture (or at least that culture before the fall of Communism).

Erm, except for all the info you're given, the fucking film could take place in any major European city and if you can look past things like obviously European license plates, even any major American city. Since I'm going to be talking about Czech (and hopefully Eastern European) art so frequently on this blog I might have to paste this into the banner up top, but here's what Milan Kundera has to say about this (largely Western:3:) tendency to impose political dimensions onto every freaking piece of Eastern European art ever:

If you cannot view the art that comes to you from Prague, Budapest, or Warsaw in any other way than by means of this wretched political code, you murder it, no less brutally than the worst of the Stalinist dogmatists. And you are quite unable to hear its true voice. The importance of this art does not lie in the face that it pillories this or that political regime but that, on the strength of social and human experience of a kind people here in the West cannot even imagine, it offers new testimony about mankind.

I'm not saying that a political reading isn't possible, but as I learn more about Czech film I'm starting to see more and more of this grafting of Cold War mentality onto films that do so much more than just attack Communism. Conspirators of Pleasure was made in 1996 for fuck's sake! That's seven years! Let it go! Sigh. The Holden quote wouldn't bug me so much if it weren't the first damn quote on the insert, although the Roger Ebert snip that follows is actually somehow perceptive,:3; and I guess the rest of Holden's review is okay, sorta.

Also on the DVD is a short by Svankmejer called Food, a truly funny and weird set of three vignettes (Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner) ostensibly about food but, just as Conspirators of Pleasure isn't really about erotic fetishes, but the way humans interact as a consequence of the strange manifestations of their urges and desires, Food is an examination of the way people treat each other and themselves, viewed through the lens of another primal instinct--eating.

For all my blabber about "themes" and whatnot, one can easily turn off the ol' thought blob and enjoy Svankmejer's films purely on the basis of their incredible visual style and exceptional sound design. And hey, they're funny too.

I need to see more of this stuff. Anyone who credits the Marquis de Sade, Freud, Luis Bunuel, and Max Ernst for their "Professional Expertise" (at the head of the credits, no less) can't help but pique my interest.

:1: But SHOULD, godfuckingdammit.
:2: Like it or not, the interaction between producers and consumers of TV is a relationship. It's a kinda crap and rather one-sided relationship, but still...
:3: Save the Communist censors, that is, who had an amazing ability to extract "offensive" political subtexts from just about anything. In one book on Czech film I read, the author mentions a photograph of Prague's equivalent of hippies on a float during the 60s flashing peace signs included in a book published by some rather ardent State watchdogs. The Communist caption reads that this means "Two minutes until we attack!"
:4: Roger Ebert can stick both his thumbs up his own ass, as far as I'm concerned. guh.