Unstable Minds

Lunacy

Directed by Jan Svankmajer

Lunacy, celebrated Czech animator Jan Svankmajer's latest semi-live action feature, is supposedly a "horror film." But its ability to engage with the antics of unstable minds has more comic weight than conventional scarefare, particularly due to the considerable screen time Svankmajer dedicates to the stop-motion adventures of uncooked meat. With those unlikely protagonists hogging the spotlight, the deliciously surreal tone maintains a consistently lurid charm. In crafting a story that borrows liberally from the works of Edgar Allen Poe and the Marquis de Sade, Svankmajer clashes blasphemy with its cynical counterpoint. It may be a comedy of manners, but whose? Not those of Jean (Pavel Liska), a young man living in a loose version of late 19th century France, who copes with regular nightmares of being hauled off to an asylum. En route home after the death of his mother, Jean encounters an offbeat gentleman at a dining hall who puts him up for the night at his gothic mansion. There, Jean witnesses an unsettling orgiastic ritual involving the fetishistic devouring of chocolate cake, sadistic whipping sessions and hedonistic perversions of religious symbolism. As grotesque spectacles go, this one is a guilty pleasure that Jean, providing the most identifiably sober perspective, unwittingly absorbs.

After a grimly amusing burial sequence, Jean ends up at an insane asylum where the inmates run free and the staff flounders in helpless lockdown. Here, nobody's remotely sane: The asylum is a dreadful closet of fantastical creatures dredged up from repressed desire. The general lingering horror of torture treatment at the hands of doctors comes across with more potency than a fornicating Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. Both films attack the establishment for projecting a singular definition of normalcy, but Lunacy, which posits that there is no escape from the insanity of the system, could function as a parable for Abu Ghraib.

The greatest aspect of Svankmajer's direction is that he guarantees a way to make you uncomfortable, but not to the point where you might lose interest. The wizened 72-year-old opens with a proclamation that "the madhouse we live in today" oscillates between extreme control and anarchy-an argument that isn't tough to follow. His increasingly disjointed plot uses gallows humor that leaves little chance for redemption. That's part of the fun-Svankmajer's artistry conjures entertainment value from the more unsettling aspects of human woes. Viewing the film walks a fine line between exhilaration and humiliation, but overall it's a blast. Everything comes together with the dancing beef, which inexplicably pops up in between various set pieces. While the film might inspire coffee-fueled, post-screening discussion, it won't leave anyone hungry.