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Director: Jan Švankmajer
Scriptwriter: Jan Švankmajer
Out of all of Jan Švankmajer's short and feature
length animated and live action films, The
Death of Stalinism in Bohemia is the only one that has been openly
political. Christened a work of "agitpop", it stands out in the Czeck
surrealist's career when his themes are usually universal in theme. Originally
I feel in love with his films for turning everyday objects into living
entities: animal tongue slithering along onscreen, tables enjoying picnics in
the countryside, and people made of vegetables in reference to the art of Giuseppe Arcimboldo amongst other images
that are only seen in his work. Soon after I found appeal in how he used to
tackle themes such as sexual taboos (Conspirators
of Pleasure (1996)) to conformity (The
Garden (1968)), or transformed literature from Lewis Carroll to Edgar Allen
Poe into his own vision. The Death
of Stalinism... is still very much a surreal work as his other films,
juxtapositions that should not be coming to life and reflecting subjective
symbolism. But in depicting its theme of the history of communism in Czechoslovakia
from the later 1940s to the Velvet Revolution of 1989, this becomes the most
openly political work he had made yet with detailed references to real events
and political figures.
The film begins this journey
through history with the statue of Joseph
Stalin being placed on an operating table, his head opened up and the bust
of Klement Gottwald, head of the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1948 until 1953, being birthed from
inside his head. The film despite its more noticeable political content is
still unequivocally Švankmajer's
interpretation of them, his trademarks of stop motion animation representing
the emotions about his country during these decades and the then-future, the
statue of Stalin still haunting the Czech Republic disguised in the country's
colours at the end. The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet tanks is
depicted by rolling pins for example, moving on mass in various sizes from
giant to small one crushing stones and other things in their path down a hill.
If one had a good knowledge of the history of Czechoslovakia during the later
forties to 1989, or was born in the country, this short would have immense
meaning, a matter-of-face absurdity to these images which do not trivialise the
severity of them.
Far from didactic it still
presents the material through Švankmajer's
grim if quietly black humoured tone, a grotesqueness in the ordinary. The
farcical nature inherent within this real history, images of bullet holes
suddenly appearing in brick walls, is comparable to Juraj Herz's The Cremator
(1969), both difficult to laugh with in their humour knowing real people
died outside of the cinema screen. The film succinctly depicts the end result
of the history with a prolonged scene of gloved hands, faces not seen, crafting
workers out of clay and moulds, the creations going on conveyor belts to their
own executions by hanging, the bodies falling back into the bucket of clay used
to create them. A skull eating through pictures of Stalin or the infamous
Soviet leader developing eyes emphasises the director's visible rage at what
took place during his lifetime, but it interconnects with acts of violence that
take place in his other short films like Dimensions
of Dialogue (1982) or Virile Games
(1988), in the most innocuous of places like the latter's depiction of a
football match as much as in political events that shape a whole country. If there
is a danger of the meaning of the short being lost as people forget the history
being retold, there is still this general absurdity and violence in normalcy that
runs through many of the director's films, linking with his Surrealist views.
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Technical Detail:
Openly, Švankmajer is one of the most profound influences on my film tastes
as they were developing. With this comes a knowledge as well of the incredible
determination and exhausting hours of time that were likely spent to create a
ten minute short like this. Even his last feature film Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) (2010), which used paper
cut-outs, looked like it was laborious and time consuming to get each scene and
moment done right. Švankmajer even
more so then the similarly talented Quay
Brothers is concerned with aesthetic textures in his films as part of
depicting his ideas. The camera is usually static for each shot but he channels
the cinematic qualities deprived from the restriction to the content onscreen
in the animation and production design.
A statue of Stalin is given threatening life, and when the two birthing
sequences happen, you get the disgusting texture of entrails being moved aside
by gloved surgeon's hands to birth the child of Stalin's politics, right down
to an umbilical cord being cut and a slap on the back of the statue bust's head
to make it cry. What Švankmajer
learnt, in his life as a puppeteer, an animator, an artist, and a film
director, with the many skills he learnt over the decades, is deceptively
simple yet ignored to a horrifying extent in a lot of cinema, that in real life
the world as a person views it in texture and "coarseness" is as much
part of our existence as our thoughts and relationships are. That a floor can
be dirty or clean, a hand can have arthritis or dirty finger nails, that
objects are chipped or splintered, details you rarely get in realistic drama
and fantasy films equally. Far from mere surface detail, it is instinctively
part of people's perceptions of their environments, and it's important here in
this film too. The starkness of the film in these small details adds to the
importance of its message, the rudimentary decoration of where the clay workers
are made and hung, the knife used to cut the nooses the same one used to spread
mustard on the godlike hands' meal, to the intersplicing of images of
propagandist sporting activity with De Sadian illustrations of orgies.
Abstract Spectrum:
Surrealist; Expressionist
Abstract Rating
(High/Medium/Low/None): Low
The overt political tone of The Death of Stalinism... does reduce
the abstract tone of this film compared to others in Švankmajer's filmography. When he is dealing with more universal
themes or adapting other artists' work like in Jabberwocky (1971) he allows it to be starting points for very unconventional
imagery and juxtapositions, which are simple in their execution of the ideas
but still startling and uneasy to the viewer. The surrealism that does exist in
this particular film is still poignant, used to emphasis the message of the
film.
Personal Opinion:
Originally I was cold to The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia for
many years compared to other Švankmajer
short films. I'd recommend, if you explore Švankmajer's
short films, to begin with Jabberwocky
and Dimensions of Dialogue, while
personal favourites like Food (1992)
to Virile Games also stand out as
the next ones to watch. The Death of
Stalinism... would've had greater power originally if my knowledge of Czech
history was stronger, but it has grown in significance as a stronger
production. Inherently the level of quality in the creation of the short and
it's execution of ideas is as strong as in all the other films, and as the one
overtly political film in his filmography, it stands out greatly on its own
terms.
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