Customer Reviews

Little Otik [VHS]

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'Little Otik' tells its story from two female perspectives. The first is that of a young wife who, infertile like her husband, is depressed because she is childless. Buying a rural allotment to take their minds off their plight, the husband, in a moment of apocalyptic stupidity, digs up an old root and jokingly carves it into the shape of a baby. The mother, far from laughing, transfers all her pent-up maternal feelings onto the stump, even going so far as faking a pregnancy for the neighbours, wearing specially sized cushions each month. Mrs Horakova is an adult who regresses into childhood, who replaces the intolerableness of reality with fantasy and play, make-believing motherhood just as a child plays with its dolls.

The other primary viewpoint in the film belongs to Alzbetha, whose family lives facing the Horaks in a glum Prague tenement. Her development is in the opposite direction, from child to adult. A sturdy eleven-year-old, she is becoming a sexual creature, regularly ogled by the paedophile janitor, hiding sex-education books in a volume of fairy tales, dodging the blows of a comically brutal dad who freaks out every time his little girl declaims something 'adult'. Where Mrs. Horakova tries to hide reality, Alzbetha attempts to discover knowledge - she is a detective figure reading the clues of weirdness and death being left by her neighbours. It is almost as if knowledge is too much for women to bear, though, because discovery causes her moment of regress, and she replaces Mrs. Horakova as the wood's mother, resorting to increasingly desperate tactics to feed it. Because by this atage Otik has become an enormous, insatiable child, feeding on humans to sustain itself.

Facing each other like mirror reflections, these two households offer bizarre distortions on the idea of the family unit. 'Little Otik' is filmed with an austere but grotesque realism, with a shabby, small-minded Czech milieu not so different from the dank settings of Svankmajer's Communist-era films. Huge close-ups focus in on faces expresing (usually gross) appetite, whether for food, drink, sex, reassurance, family, knowledge or love. Equal prominence is given to things, especially food, whose sticky, lumpy liquidity becomes a uteral/infant displacement in a series of provocative visual puns. There are fantasies at the beginning of the film - such as when Mr. Horak sees babies everywhere, being sold like fish at a street market, or enwombed in a watermelon - but they are clearly signalled as such, as unreal as the violently unsubtle advertising that Alzbetha's couch potato father watches, usually for products that require no human input. Svankmajer's trademark puppetry is kept to a minimum, and, except in one case, is used to express character subjectivity (the girl eyeing the bulging trousers of the paedophile; her father witnessing live nails in his soup).

That one exception is little Otik himself, who is given life by the sheer force of his mother's desire, and is sustained by the collusion of the little girl. He is created by the father, and the film adds Frankenstein/Golem/Genesis resonances to its Kafka and fairy tale structure - but it is lifeless until the mother succours it. It is the two women who make it real, who displace drab and unjust reality with an all-consuming, murderous fantasy (it is significant that 'truth' is uncovered by reference to a folk tale). Fertility distorted devours all that surrounds it. The void of denial is filled by a monster who, through appetite, literally creates absence (appropriately, his victims represent authority, bureaucratic, generational and filial). I'm sure this is an allegory of some sort for modern Czech consumerism - as in Haneke's 'The Seventh Continent', a family unit is driven to ruthless besiege isself - but the relentless allusions to the director's previous film, the dark fairy tale mirror-worlds of 'Alice' and 'Down In The Cellar' expecially, suggest that the director is once more interested in burrowing the unexplored recesses of the mind, body and imagination. The result is his most uncomfortable and funny film in years.

"Once upon a time there lived a woodcutter and his wife who longed for a little baby..." That's how so many fairytales start and in this extraordinary, disturbing and witty film the fairytale is brought to life not in some suitably fairy-tale setting (as was the case in e.g. Cocteau's "La Belle et La Bete" or Jordan's "Company of Wolves") but in a dingy block of urban flats in central Europe. Here we find the childless, no longer so young, Bozena and Karel who are both hopelessly infertile and wholly in despair. But Karel digs up an old tree stump which looks a bit like a baby, cuts it up a bit to make the resemblance closer and gives it to his wife as a rather sick joke. Immediately, to his horror, she sets about loving it. She even sets up an elaborate fake pregnancy for herself so she can present it in public as her baby - though she soon learns that, given its appearance, she can't very easily do any such thing. Then after she has "given birth", Karel returns home to find the tree stump, named Otik, has somehow become alive and is hungrily suckling at his wife's breast. He wants to cut it to pieces with an axe but she desperately prevents him and they continue to feed it. It grows rapidly bigger and bigger and hungrier and hungrier. In a wonderfully horrible scene it attacks Bozena by grabbing her hair in its teeth. Then it eats their cat. Then it eats the postman. A social worker is sent round and asks to see the baby. "Don't be afraid, I'm not going to eat him", she says. Indeed, au contraire...

The dramatic centre of the film is not any of the characters so far mentioned so much as it is Alzbetka, the little girl next door, beautifully played by Kristina Adamcova. She has a precociously strong interest in everything to do with reproduction and motherhood and assiduously reads books on sex and obstetrics hidden inside the covers of fairy tale collections to evade the notice of her stuffy and anxious father. No one is quite as interested as Alzbetka in the parental lives of Karel and Bozena and soon she is the only person really alive to what is happening next door. But rather than being afraid of the monster she now has for a neighbour her attitude to it becomes maternal and protective...

If you like monster movies and fancy checking out something a bit different this is a good place to come. Indeed it is so enormously different that it is worth checking out if you ordinarily hate monster movies but are open to anything remarkable and imaginative. It's an excellent movie, though perhaps a little bit too long for so simple a tale and the end is a little slow coming. But the first half in particular, charting the surreal nightmare of Bozena's growing madness and then the horror of the suddenly living and feeding Otik is marvellous. Svankmajer doesn't have a monster-sized Hollywood special effects budget to create Otik but he does have a distinguished history as an animator and uses animation techniques to make something magnificantly creepy and horrible. Sometimes one is reminded of the hideous infant from Lynch's "Eraserhead" but really Svankmajer's Otik is like nothing else, a hideous confusion of roots and teeth. It might give you nightmares.

Little Otik is a made-for-TV film constructed in the way of the old, precious Czech films of 30 years ago. It sets a folktale (of which we are given the essential of the text) in the contemporary urban Czech Republic. A lot of the interest of the story is in the resultant recasting.

This only makes the film all the more faithful to the mythical force of the original tale, which is part-Little Red Riding Hood, part-Alien, but cuts much closer to the bone than either LRRH or Alien. Do take that as a warning: Little Otik is a horror story, and one that makes Alien (any installment) look like a ride in an amusement park. Otik himself is also a more horrible creation than any version of the Aliens, and achieved with 1% of the budget for special effects.

One example of the more-than-successful recasting for a modern urban context -- In the original tale the monster is male but all the *active* participants are women. When the tale is turned into a 2-hour contemporary film, this aspect becomes much enriched. The transgressing mother that is at the origin of the tale becomes one instance of urban motherhood, linked into the usual variety of real, incipient or wishful mothers. And the underlying impulsions are given full screen time, with few words or none.

Because the film has a true, deep, classical horror as its backbone, it can get down to the business of delivering it without masses of special effects, without surprise cuts, without terrifying sounds, without ominous hints. And most of all without extraneous business. This is why it is more than worth watching.

Perhaps, though, the TV destination pushed the author into somewhat too much restraint. You do want a movie not just to recount something but to show it, and we are only shown the necessary minimum. This is the opposite excess to Alien's and, though far less destructive than scary-movie tactics are in Alien, it still leaves you with the feeling of having missed something.

The folktale text we are given has the same all's-well-that-ends-well final fixup that many versions of Little Red Riding Hood have (when the hunter comes in). To the movie's credit, it chooses to end precisely at that moment, with a black screen. We can believe in the Happy End or take up the myth in full. (This is close to the Sphynx myth, and the Sphynx is eternal.) In either case, up to that point, we have been plunged in the mind-world of eternal horror tales. ...

A Czech folk tale is given a psychological and socially satirical slant in this twisted and highly humorous piece of Euro-Cinema. Childless couple Karel and Bozena are given a shot at parenthood when hubby Karel presents his despondent wife with a (sort of) human-shaped tree root, in an attempt to amuse her. He regrets the act almost immediately when she snatches the gift, dresses it up, and begins to treat it like a real infant. In the time that follows, she stages an elaborate fake pregnancy, culminating in a ritualized "birth", and the little one is given the name Otik.

To his horror, Bozena's husband arrives one evening to find her nursing the child, which has actually come to life. And it is very, insatiably hungry. A neighbor's daughter, inquisitive Alzbekta, knows something is up from the couple's strange behavior, and from the way visitors begin to mysteriously disappear. Amongst the books on human development and sexuality she peruses, she finds in a book of Fairy Tales the fable of Otesanek, a hungry tree monster, and ends up being the only character in the developing, horrific scenario who has a clue what is going on, as well as what is to ensue.

This movie has been compared to The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby and Eraserhead; I would have to throw in nods to It's Alive, Little Shop of Horrors ('61) and maybe Delicatessen. Despite the overly broad humor, somewhat primitive, jerky animation style and a rather unsatisfying ending, Little Otik delivers some good sick fun in this sidewise view of parenting and consumerism. One may never look at food quite the same way again.

LITTLE OTIK, or OTESÁNEK, is a feature length movie by Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer. With plot synopses using phrases like `bizarre fantasy' and considering Svankmajer's creds - he's been a member of the Prague Surrealist Group since 1969 - I'm not sure what I expected, or what I should have expected. Razor-sliced eyeballs and people tumbling through mirrors, the typical surrealist stuff, might have been a start. Or maybe something a little closer in spirit to a Svankmajer 1969 short (THE FLAT) that's included on this dvd. That one is about a young fellow in a humble hut who's trying to eat a meal while rocks tumble out of the faucet and his hands melt through the top of a wooden table.

What I didn't quite expect was a coherent narrative dressed here and there with stop-action and traditional, albeit somewhat choppy, flat animation. In an on-line interview with Svankmajer the director describes Otesánek as "a topical version of the Faust myth: a rebellion against nature and the tragic dimension of that rebellion." Okay. Maybe. Whatever. LITTLE OTIK introduces us to a typical middle-class couple who, unfortunately, are both infertile. One day the husband unearths a tree root, notes its resemblance to a human figure, and soon the wife is ungoing a false pregnancy and making sure that Little Otik is swaddled, powdered, and varnished periodically.

I suppose an American movie would try to give us a why, but this movie is content to accept without question that after nine months Little Otik is suddenly very much alive - and voraciously hungry. Besides the parents, who are cleverly able to hide the `newborn' in plain sight, precocious 10-year-old Alzbeta (Kristina Adamcová) is the only other person who seems to realize what's going on. If you're like me and are a little leery when words like `bizarre' and `surreal' are connected to foreign movies be at ease. I wouldn't even worry much about that `rebellion against nature' stuff. LITTLE OTIK is a gentle, funny, and intelligent little horror film.

It's based on a Czech fairy tale called "Greedy Guts". A woman badly wants a baby but both she and her husband are sterile. One day her husband digs up a tree root and it looked a little like a person. So he carved it to make it look more like a baby as a joke (seems like a sick one to me) and gave it to her. The mentally unbalanced wife immediately fell in love with the ugly piece of wood and treated as a baby. This "baby" comes to life and boy is it hungry! The little girl who lives in the same building notices stuff going on and finds the truth in a book of fairy tales. She wants to save little Otik and does her darnedest.

I don't want to give away too much of this movie. It's in Czech so you have to read the subtitles (unless you know Czech!). It's very good. Even the little girl's family is somewhat funny. My only complain is it could have been made shorter with good editing. I felt it got bogged down with prolonged scenes.

Rivals his "Faustus" but more accessible to a wider audience. The storyline is fairly straightforward: a barren couple somehow transform a wooden tree root into an insatiably ravenous baby-creature which eats everything in sight and keeps getting bigger and bigger.

The subtext, as reflected in among other things the closeups of food going down human throats throughout the movie, is somewhat Buddhist: the little hungry monster is really just a metaphor for that equally bottomless pit of human desire/ego in all of us, which also wishes to gobble up everything it can.

Svankmejer weaves in some deft social satire here, playing on the pathological romanticization of having babies that is especially strong in pre-feminist present-day Czech society but endemic in all societies, a pathological romanticization which becomes obsession and madness when its actualization is thwarted by nature.

Along with Svankmejer's richly imaginative, trademark surrealism there is some beautiful cinematography and stop-animation here which makes this movie as visually fascinating as it is thought-provoking. This man simply has no equal. It is staggering to imagine what he could produce if he had even a fraction of Steven Spielberg or George Luca's resources and top billing---since both of those directors have about a fraction of his talent and vision.

I'm making this short and sweet. I wanted to stop watching this movie all through it but just couldn't make myself watch for wanting to know what was going to happen next. Really odd and disturbingly amusing at the same time. I felt strange while watching it, kind of the same way I felt when watching movies like Eraserhead and any one of the Divine movies. If you like odd movies and don't mind subtitles then by all means watch this one.

Little Otik is a psychologically surrealistic and bizarre vision of the Czech fairy tale, Otesánek, which is a tale of greed and gluttony in the backdrop of a dysfunctional family and a modernizing society. The writer and director Jan Svankmajer expresses greed through Karel (Jan Hartl) and Bozena (Veronika Zilková), who are infertile, as they ache to start forming a family. However, their infertility devastates both of them as Karel begins to have strange delusions of infants, and Bozena enters a deep depression. In order to cope with the difficulties the couple buys a small weekend cottage where they can retreat to get their mind off the bad things in life.

Karel decides to clean up the yard around their new cottage by cutting down the trees and pulling up the roots. In the process, Karel discovers a root with some likeness of a newborn, and he decides to play a little trick on his wife Bozena to lighten up the gloomy atmosphere around them. However, when Karel brings home the root Bozena has a break down, which seems to lead her to believe that the root truly is an infant. Bozena sees a navel, fingers, and a mouth and so on, which intensify her delusion. In panic Karel grabs the root and begins to hit hard against the table repeating the words, "wood, wood, wood", but it only strikes Bozena with more horror of how he treats what she sees as a child.

In a secret charade Karel and Bozena pretend being pregnant, as she wants to nurture the root. The day comes when Bozena gives birth, which is funny in a peculiar way, and Karel has to drive her to their cottage where she hides out. When Karel returns he makes a horrific discovery as the root has turned into a live thing, which they end up calling Otik.

The maternal connection between Bozena and Otik could be likened to Dr. Frankenstein's affection for the creature that he created as he yells, "It's alive!" The affection could be seen as an obsessive as the creature grows rapidly and its seemingly endless hunger drives them to near bankruptcy. When Otik's hunger arises and no food is to be served then Otik grabs whatever is available, which leads the couple into a quandary as they have to balance the law with their love for Otik. It turns into a strange tale of grotesque and surreal decisions as the little Otik turns into the monstrous Otik.

Next door through the eyes of a neighbor child, Alzbetka, the audience gets to experience her abusive family whose only way of educating her is a firm slap on the head. Alzbetka does not have any friends, which is something she is dreaming of having, and she does not want to befriend her classmates, according to her, who are stupid. Alzbetka reads books on human sexuality and whatever else she can get her hands on. When the neighbor becomes pregnant Alzbetka is the only person who smells something fishy, as she investigates and discovers the truth through a fairytale book.

Through the story in the book Alzbetka foresees a gruesome path cornered in blood, gluttony, and a surreal friendship. The gluttony in the story seems to be an analogy to the modernizing society in which the Czech people want more things to fill their small apartments. This notion is also supported through Alzbetka's father who constantly watches TV at night, while devouring different kind of snacks, desiring whatever the commercials display.

Little Otik, ultimately, offers a good cinematic experience, even if it could seem to be a little long. Nonetheless, the tale provides excellent cinematography through several close-ups and zooms, which is edited in an occasionally rapid manner. This encourages the audience to pay attention to the events on the screen. There is stop-motion animation, which is a somewhat of a trademark for Jan Svankmajer and can seen in his previous films such as Alice (1988), Faust (1994), and Conspirators of Pleasure (1996). It is this stop-motion animation that brings the lifeless root to life in a very surreal, yet fascinating manner, as the film creates a wonderfully bizarre event that will not be forgotten.

Little Otik (Jan Svankmajer, 2000)

Jan Svankmajer's Alice, perhaps his best-known movie, is the kind of thing you either love or hate. Little Otik strengthens the strong points of Alice while mitigating that film's weak points; those who hated Alice might be convinced to give Svankmajer another try with this little gem.

Karel (Valley of Exile's Jan Hartl) and Bozena (Veronika Zilkova, who won the Best Actress at the 2000 Czech Lions for her role here) are an infertile couple. Bozena wants a child more than anything else in the world. One day, at their country house, Karel digs up a stump that looks remarkably like a baby, and after some polishing, he gives it to Bozena, who has already hatched a scheme to cure her baby mania-- pretending she's pregnant. All this alternately amuses and confuses the neighbor child, Alzbetka (Kristina Adamcova, in what to date is her only film role).

Supposedly based on an Eastern European fairy tale (which Alzbetka recites at various points during the film), Little Otik is a story with a great deal more structure than the drug-fueled tale of Alice in Wonderland. Rather than limiting Svankmajer, extra structure allows him to come up with interesting and inventive ways to work his favorite obsessions into the film (though I must admit I miss the sock-worms this time around). He does it well, however, the same way Shakespeare shone when constraining his verse into sonnet form. The repetition is still there, and the deeply disturbing stop-motion animation, but they seem more an integral part of the story in Little Otik than they ever did in Alice. A truly amazing film. **** ½