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Lunacy
Zeitgeist Films


7.0

based on 16 reviews
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based on 2 votes
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FILM:

Little Otik

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Pavel Liska, Jan Triska, Anna Geislerová, Jaroslav Dusek, Martin Huba, Pavel Nový, Stano Danciak, and Jirí Krytinár

The latest provocation from surrealist master Jan Svankmajer is based on two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and inspired by the works of the Marquis de Sade. Lunacy combines live action and stop-motion, sex and violence, grand guignol terror and gallows humor, and a lot of animated meat. (Zeitgeist Films)

GENRE(S):	Foreign \| Horror
WRITTEN BY:	Jan Svankmajer Edgar Allan Poe (story) Marquis de Sade (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Jan Svankmajer
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 20, 2007 Theatrical: August 9, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	118 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Czech Republic / Slovakia
LANGUAGE(S):	Czech (with English subtitles)

Original title "Sílení"

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

One of the best films of the year.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade (interesting combination, no?).

TV Guide Ken Fox

Svankmajer has crafted his finest live-action feature to date.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

Svankmajer's nihilistic story isn't for everyone, but he skillfully manages its disturbing execution in ways no one else could, and he brings it across in a darkly comedic way that encourages simultaneous laughter, horror, and thought. If that isn't art, what is?

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

The film is imaginative but ugly, with bodily functions an unending source for grotesque and revolting imagery.

The Hollywood Reporter Richard James Havis

It's a fully formed film which transcends polemic by an intelligent use of the imagination.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Its view of mankind is unkind, to say the least, but any race that can produce such remarkably garish gore as this is perhaps salvageable somehow, someday.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

While Lunacy leaves you with the impression that Svankmajer is more expressive with cutlets than he is with his atypically human-dominated dreamscape, some of the images are doozies.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

At nearly two hours Lunacy becomes repetitive, at first ingeniously and then with a slowly dulling edge. The meat parade ceases to shock.

Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen

For all its visual surprises and visceral shocks, Lunacy is still the kind of film that is easier to admire than it is to actually like.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

While dinner and a movie is in theory a great idea, I'd avoid eating before taking in Lunacy.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Lunacy feels programmatic, the repetitive working through of an idea that had me checking my watch.

Variety Jay Weissberg

More moving animal parts and less human pontificating would make a stronger case for a tale already rich in imagery. Another drawback is Liska, too one-dimensional to stand against Triska's overpowering performance.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Mr. Svankmajer’s provocations skew toward the intellectual and the shivery rather than the pop and the visceral, and at his best, he doesn’t just get under your skin, but also deep in your head, too. Here, unfortunately, he does neither, despite some marvelous stop-motion animated sequences involving a literal moveable feast of severed animal tongues, loose eyeballs and errant brains.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Lunacy is dark, scary, and yucky--even by the Czech animator's own standards.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Weird anachronisms (cars, telephones, home computers) contribute to the craziness, but despite the copious imagination on display, this is a fairly long haul.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Josh c gave it a7:
Lunacy is Svankmajer's most political work—or, rather, the one that most explicitly announces its political ambitions. By film's end, amidst a gonzo flurry of chicken feathers, sadomasochistic violence, and infectious laughter, a blue-balled Jean is caught between a rock and a hard place, a nut and a bigger nut—a standstill reflective of our current state of affairs. This is a constantly buzzing tinker-toy of sensualist shocks and homegrown invention, but Svankmajer makes the mistake of deconstructing the film for us during an introductory onscreen address and, then, saddling characters with explanatory rhetoric about the degradation of authority and the body's drive for dominance. The film's great irony is that its hulking animal tongues conspire for our pleasure while Svankmajer's own loose lingua acts as a buzzkill.

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Lunacy Zeitgeist Films

Lunacy
Zeitgeist Films