The local weekly referred to this film as "a disturbed cousin to Tom Tykwer's recent 'Perfume,'" and the daily said the Quay Brothers "make David Lynch look like Ron Howard," so honestly, how could I not make the time to go see this?
By now is there anything more to say about The Brothers Quay and their films than that they're strange; they're beautiful; their sui generis (that's Latin for totally freaky); you know them; you love them; or you don't and you don't and that's OK too?
Guy Maddin named this film as number one of the second five in his top ten for 2006--remember him from the entry for "Inland Empire," the number one of the first five in his top ten. OK, so he named this film number six, but I liked the symmetry with Inland in the more convoluted original phrasing of that. Please see the Inland entry for the significance of Guy Maddin including a film in his top ten, namely that he's a big freak!
What better way to give you a sense of their strangeness than this random filmgoer review of their previous feature, "Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life", which I came across at imdb:
"User Comments:
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful:-
Icily faultless, splendidly null, 25 August 2000
Author: GPeoples-2
If this has a meaning beyond the one on the surface, which carries no conviction, it's one of the classic horror films. But so far I can't see that it does. The authoritarian, sexually perverse world it depicts seems the creation of someone who has never experienced oppression or obsession at first hand and has nothing to say about it. This is a totally artificial and hermetic work. On the other hand, its distance from reality and purpose allows its manufacturers to take as much time as they please to refine and distill its essence, as in a bottle. But what is it they're distilling? Whatever it is, it gives off a lovely scent. One exquisite shot follows another; the actors are perfectly cast. Alice Krige I suppose can be called a cult figure now (I'm one of the cult), and in this she has finally found the ideal environment. The film is never uninteresting but should have been disturbing, and some day I hope to find something inside it."
Do you know the Brothers each have their own entry on imdb?--that just doesn't seem right. They're identical twins you know and they do everything together, at least everything that would be of concern to the imdb. Talk about a couple of freaks! But seriously, this film was fabulously strange and beautiful; I know, I already said that. I recommend it if you're at least moderately deranged.
How about this--another Benjamenta commentator:
"User Comments:
10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
A unique experience, a work of exceeding beauty, 27 January 1999
Author: August-4 from London, England
Institute Benjamenta is an oddity. Let me say that first, get it out of the way. Part of me hesitates from revealing here that it is one of my favourite films of all time because I know I'll make some people reading this mini-review approach it from the wrong angle. A film like this should never become required viewing. You should stumble across it at a repertory cinema somewhere or be beguiled by the video-box art showing the striking visage of Alice Krige as she paces before her blackboard, deerfoot staff in hand. You should find one evening that its the only thing that sounds interesting on TV, or peer at a still alongside a mention in your TV guide and wonder what on earth the picture is supposed to depict. Contained between main and end credits here is a world so visually ravishing and technically abstruse that you are only in the film while you are watching; the rules of the outside do not apply. You peer into the dreamy, foggy black-and-white and what you can't identify for certain your imagination fills out. These are the most special special effects because you wonder 'what' and 'why' by never 'how.' The Institute of the title is a school for servants, the lessons they are taught bizarre and repetitive to the point of making 'deja-vu' a permanent state of being. Is the repetition the point of it all or has the teacher lost the plot? If she has, how come we care? None of this is vaguely like real life. None of it, that is, bar the characters emotions. Or is the whole thing like real life, like Life with a capital 'L?' In the end does this sort of pondering make for a good movie? I won't answer that because I'm terribly biased. Remember the title and look it up sometime. It's the cinematic equivalent of a stunning old-fashioned magician's trick. A monochrome bouquet, a sad smile. There are images, scenes that may make the hairs on the back of your neck think they're a cornfield with a twister on the way. I tried to warn you as quietly as I could."
Wow, to quote the Barkays: "Freakshow, baby, baby, on the dancefloor, it's just a freakshow!"
Would someone just please explain to me the difference between life with a small 'l' and Life with a capital 'L?' What is it about the Brothers?--even their imdb comments are strange and beautiful. Enough said.
I'll leave you with one about Piano Tuner:
"User Comments:
5 out of 9 people found the following comment useful:-
Man's Machine, God's Tune, 17 October 2006
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach
Its a matter of abstraction. Always has been, in everything I suppose. But especially in film. The business is one of sharpening some edges and making others recede so as to cut us in some way. Its a dangerous business for all concerned and if it ever seems too competent, you know the blood is fake.
The Quays, like Maddin and Greenaway go into forbidden visual zones. They do let me down sometimes when I sense fear, but never when they stumble because stumbling is what shows the risk.
These guys already have earned a place on my short list of films you really must see before you die. I only allow two in any year, so it is something that their incredibly short "Are We Still Married?" is there. But there it is, something that is so rich and open, yet haunting, it will change your dreams permanently.
That short is entirely animated in their preferred style. They are Victorian in nature, both in the junk they assemble to create their worlds, but also in the cosmology they lean on. Its one where explicable means are all broken. Humanity escapes logic. Its the other side of the Holmes syndrome. Its where most of us live.
That's that and this is this, something more ambitious, the long form. That means you must support the long arc, a stretch across the cosmology longer than we can retain in our short memory. What they've done is rely on something we've seen before: a man-god who captures life in a life within life fold. We are sometimes in and sometimes out. The "in" is one of seven "automata," complex mechanical devices that sing life.
The tuner believes himself to be assisting in the maintenance of the machines from the outside but finds himself to be part of the mechanism. The existence of the machines allows the Quays to insert animated sequences that are supposed to merge with the live action. That live action is mostly dream space and when not, is a pseudodream world of Victorian frames and hues.
Its all just too lovely and risky and dangerous to be denied a place in your soul. Sure, it comes dangerously close to the banal. Sure, you can see a few seams and we all wish the budget for the final "performance" was bigger. But if you allow yourself to be swept in this as you routinely do for other science fiction worlds, you will find a sort of psychic sexual release in some long sequences.
In reading about this, some cite Svankmejer as an influence. You need to understand this. Svankmeyer is a Czech animator, a good one. He's an influence in just being there and surviving. But his world is organic and bleak. It is the stuff that comes from repeatedly beaten innocents. The Quays are more mechanical in their images, more episodic in the small. And leagues more optimistic. Their world is one where the sun shines, but just over the edge of a place in which we are stuck.
It makes all the difference. One you would bring children to, in hopes that they would remain children in the edges and so make you wise. The Czech, no. That's where you go to die or try.
I'm putting this as a four for the time being. It may be bumped. 2005 was a very bad year for film. But I haven't yet seen "Cache" or "History of Violence."
Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this."
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