Lunacy

Excellent

great

VERY GOOD!

I was introduced to Jan Svankmajer's work with a feature film called "Conspirators of Pleasure" which was a movie with no dialogue and dealt with masturbation. That said, I fell in love with the czech surrealists work and animation."Lunacy" is another gem (this time with dialogue!) and is based loosely on the works of Poe and the Marquis de Sade (but you can tell that from reading the dvd jacket, you silly monkey!)and I know that there is dialogue in his other films such as "Faust" and "Alice", but this film seems to rely more on the words then the visuals.From all of his films I've seen, this could very well be my favorite.I know this is just my opinion and everything, but you owe it to yourself to purchase this film. Watch it, Love it, and let your friends borrow it and enjoy it's awesomeness!

Faust was much better. Lunacy seemed ridiculous.

lunacy

An exceptionally well made, warm hearted comedy drama for the whole family. Not many family films touch on this level of compassion.

Jan Svankmajer is one of my favorite directors and I bought Lunacy without knowing anything about it beyond a simple synopsis; unfortunately it fell very short for me. Aside from some nice stop-motion sprinkled throughout (though accompanied by obnoxious carnival music) and a neat orgiastic ritual scene the movie is slow and unaffecting. If you're a Svankmajer fan definitely see this at some point; but if you're just trying him out get Alice or Faust or even Conspirators of Pleasure. I think all three are equally superior and give a better sense of what Svankmajer can do.

It's a joy that two of Svankmajer's past feature films - this and 'Conspirators of Pleasure' - have finally got official UK releases. 'Lunacy' was, to my knowledge, only previously available in region 1, yet here it is at long last.The film can be divided into two halves. The first half takes place in the shabby grandeur of a marquis' house (who presumably, going by Svankmajer's acknowledged inspirations for the film, is modelled after the Marquis De Sade). Jean, a young man on the way to his mother's funeral, is invited on his journey to spend the night in the Marquis' home - there he witnesses a blasphemous orgy (with plenty of chocolate cake) and an equally mysterious burial. The second half unfolds in a chicken-filled mental asylum where Jean goes to stay voluntarily, hoping to cure his frightening nightmares of being forcibly straitjacketed. Ideas of the conflict between order and reason and liberty and imagination (the latter clearly favoured) are here played out with the asylum as a backdrop - the patients are given free reign of the place, sledding down the stairways in showers of feathers and staging a tableau vivant of Delacroix's 'Liberty Leading the People'. The film is also curiously anachronistic: the extras in the opening scenes are dressed in modern clothing, and pile onto a bus, yet the Marquis is decked out as an eighteenth-century libertine and the main sets are weathered and Baroque; a computer keyboard is placed amid the clutter of an old-fashioned doctor's office.Svankmajer's trademark stop-motion animation is much more absent in 'Lunacy', when compared to its prominence in his other features such as 'Alice' and 'Little Otik'. Every now and then, at random intervals, short vignettes pop up of chunks of meat cavorting and frolicking to repetitive, carnivalesque music, possibly acting as mirrors of their live-action counterparts. This, of course, only adds to the film's overall oddness, and it is by no means rooted entirely in reality. Hallucinations are mingled with the everyday, and madness is superimposed with presumed sanity. The humour is always morbid, the imagery Gothic and wild, and characters sway ambiguously between being reliable and untrustworthy. Yet this, as always, is part of Svankmajer's charm.The DVD itself is perfect, in my opinion. I'm no expert on such matters, but I thought the picture and sound quality was flawless, and there's even a short behind-the-scenes documentary showing various aspects of the production. It's fascinating to see Svankmajer at work on-set, interacting with the actors.Overall, a much-welcomed release. I would urge any fan of Svankmajer's work to get it before it goes out of print, as this generally seems to be the fate of his feature film releases!

Perhaps Svankmeyer's darkest vision. There is humour, but it is subservient to the overall tone of nihilistic mayhem.I love all things Svankmeyer, having discovered his work via the short animation films.Sometimes his full length films have the feel of a series of short films stitched together in slightly haphazard ways...always wonderfully imaginative and provocative, but not always coherent as a whole.'Lunacy' is a more consistently arranged narrative, reminiscent of the 'Marat / Sade' play and film, but even darker.

HUGE fan of all things Svankmajer!Utterly, totally, bonkers and BRILLIANT!

good

Usual bizarre offering from Svankmajer but excellent all the same