Little Otik (Otesanek)

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Lenny's description:


Seller's description:
When a couple learns they cant have children it causes great distress. To ease his wifes pain the man finds a piece of root in the backyard chops & varnishes it into the shape of a child. However the woman starts to pretend its real. When the root takes life they seem to have gained a child. Studio: Zeitgeist Films Release Date: 01/21/2003 Run time: 126 minutes Rating: Nr


Product details:

Item number (ASIN): B000077VS5
Actor: Veronika Zilková, Jan Hartl, Jaroslava Kretschmerová, Pavel Nový, Kristina Adamcová
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Category: DVD
Creator: Erna Kmínková, Jaromír Kallista, Jirí Vanek, Keith Griffiths, Karel Jaromír Erben
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, Special Edition, Subtitled, NTSC
Languages: Czech, English, English
Manufacturer: Zeitgeist Films
Number Of Items: 1
Original Release Date: January 1, 2000
Package Dimensions: 58 x 542 x 710 (hundredths-inches)
Package Quantity: 1
Publisher: Zeitgeist Films
Region Code: 1
Release Date: January 21, 2003
Running Time: 126, minutes
Theatrical Release Date: 2000

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Rating: - Strange movie- but you've got to see it!!
This movie is a Russian fairy tale come to life. It's a fun movie, very entertaining! It's very odd. But after I saw it I knew I had to find it for my movie collection. It's one of my favorites!!

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Rating: - If, if, if...
If this work is an allegoric story, one could figure out it illustrates a slogan "Kids are flowers on parents' graves" as a wood-made boy growing up into a monster eating everybody waling into a Prague flat. If this work is an anti-artificial-insemination et al satire, it is of a questionable context. If this work simply a parody on all above mentioned plus much more alike to be created in advance b y Hollywood, it is a parody on "family values" and "eatable" film of a modern Czech Republic.

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Rating: - Svankmajer at the height of his powers.
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

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Rating: - Fairy Tale for Adults:
The film is based on Czech fairy tale "Otesánek" ("Greedy Guts"). It is a story of a loving but childless couple, Karel and Bozena whose biggest dream is to have a baby. To make his wife smile, Karel digs up a tree root and carves it to look like a human baby. So overwhelming is Bozena's wish to become a mother that by its power, the stump transforms into a living creature with enormous appetites. Very soon, the baby formula and carrot soup are not enough to feet the little monster and mysteriously, people begin to disappear. "Little Otik" is similar to Svankmajer's earlier feature movies "Alice" and "Faust" but it is more plot-driven, has fewer stop-motion animation sequences that would not even begin until 40 or so minutes into the film. Another problem that has been noted by almost every viewer is that the movie is slightly (126 minutes) overlong and it drags a little toward the end. As excellent as Svankmajer is a live-action director, what makes him unique is the groundbreaking combination of both live-action and darkly-humorous, visceral, and surreal animation and I wanted to see more of it. Still, "Little Otik" is highly original, funny, dark, and sinister with first rate acting from live actors and many great scenes and effects. Young Kristina Adamcová is especially good as Alzbetka, Karel's and Bozena's next door neighbor, precocious and very observant girl. I highly recommend "Little Otik" but I believe that the best introductions to Svankmajer are his short stop-motion and clay-motion films. The DVD includes the B/W 12 minutes long early film "Flat" (1969) - this is Svankmajer in his nightmarish best. We are in the claustrophobic apartment with the film protagonist where every object is an enemy and predator. Pay attention to the ending -"Abandon hope all ye who enter here".

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Rating: - allegory
The only thing I might add to all the previous reviews is that it isn't about the tree 'baby'? It describes how pursuit, addicton, obsession can destroy those around one.

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