Lunacy

So, you want surrealism? Famed animator Svankmajer ( Alice, Faust, Little Otik) has described this as a “philosophical horror film” which combines the inspirations of Edgar Allen Poe and the Marquis de Sade. In nineteenth century France (albeit one full of deliberate anachronisms), a young man is wracked by nightmare visions of the madhouse. While returning from his mother’s funeral he meets a mysterious Marquis who introduces him to the world of blasphemous orgies, therapeutic funerals, and an asylum where the lunatics keep the staff under lock and key. This long-awaited project by the acknowledged master of Eastern European animation moves Svankmajer’s strange and wonderful visions into predominantly live action, but his work is as anarchic and provocative as ever. Lunacy combines live action and stop motion, sex and violence, Grand Guignol terror, and gallows humour. And a lot of animated meat.

The subject of the film is basically an ideological debate about how to run a lunatic asylum. One method encourages absolute freedom. The other, the old fashioned well-tried method of control and punishment. A third option combines the very worst aspects of the other two. And that is the madhouse we live in today.

Jan Svankmajer