Good but a Little Disturbing This is a good fairy tale, but I am waiting until my kids, four and six, are a lot older to allow them to watch it.
The story is about a woman longing to have a child. When she can't, she mothers a tree root/stump as a child. The child (Otik) becomes real and has a voracious appetite for raw meat, and he grows and grows. When the mother can't provide enough food, the child begins to bloodily devour human beings.
The mother managed to hide the child's appearance from others for a time, but a young neighbor girl eventually discovers Otik in the family's cellar. She befriends him and helps him get food, deciding which human beings (including her parents) should be eaten by Otik next.
This was a captivating film to watch. I don't particularly understand whatever symbolism might be involved; I just love fairy tales for the fun of them. Because this has some horror involved, I will wait to let my kids watch this until they are older.
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
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".
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.
Unique 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.
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