Little Otik (Otesanek)

Starring:Veronika ZilkovÃ¡, Jan Hartl, Jaroslava KretschmerovÃ¡, Pavel NovÃ½, Kristina AdamcovÃ¡, Dagmar StrÃbrnÃ¡, Zdenek KozÃ¡k, Gustav Vondracek, Arnost Goldflam, Jitka SmutnÃ¡, JirÃ LÃ¡bus, Radek Holub, Jan JirÃ¡n, Zdenek Palusga, Frantisek Polata, Vaclav Jezek, Joseph Cahill, TomÃ¡s HanÃ¡k
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Studio: Zeitgeist Films
Product Type: DVD

Description

Surrealist master Jan Svankmajer (FAUST, ALICE) brings a famous Czech legend eerily to life in the darkly hilarious cautionary tale of LITTLE OTIK. An ordinary couple, Karel and Bozena, are unable to conceive a child. When Karel digs up a tree root and whittles something vaguely resembling a human baby, Bozena's maternal longings transform the stump into a living creature with a (literally) monstrous appetite that can't be met with baby formula. Svankmajer brilliantly mixes his wicked humor with his subversive politics and love of mythology into a stunning live-action fable for our times. This Edition also features Svankmajer's surrealist THE FLAT

Customer Reviews:

Svankmajer at the height of his powers........2007-05-12

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:.......2007-04-16

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.......2007-03-18

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.......2006-08-06

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.

Dry wood of impotence.......2006-08-01

"Little Otik" is chiefly a film about uncontrolled appetite masked by a Czech fairy tale. Svankmajer does a great job of concealing his real intention--that of unsettling the viewer, forcing him/her to recognize the essentially animal nature of hunger, affection, and the functions of Eros in general--and Little Otik, the revolting little tree that could go toe to toe with Lynch's "Mutant Baby" anyday, is the archetype for his unmasking of humanity's absurd plight.

That a children's story could have inspired this film at all is a testament to the almost deviant creativity of the director. Madness, frustration, distrust, mayhem and destruction are given an almost comedic touch.

The story is obviously allegorical: a seriously unbalanced woman, Bozena, and her poor husband Karl are uncapable of conceiving a child. Symbolism of infertility/impotence abound throughout the film to the point of unintentional absurdity. Or maybe this is just Svankmajer's way of getting kicks.

You cannot help but feel for Karl. After the unfathomably stupid act of chopping down a tree stump that faintly resembles a baby and giving it to the crazy Bozena, his life is sheer hell right up to the most unpleasant end. He jumps through a million flaming hoops for his increasingly disturbed wife whose unrelenting obsession with childbirth, being a mother, etc, end in the horrific resurrection of this piece of bark from inanimate wood to a living, breathing being with only one thing in mind: satisfying the id, the uncontrolled appetite.

And so the game is afoot, so to speak. All the subplots emerge, the most interesting involving a precocious young girl living in the same apartment flat as Karl and Bozena, and whose intrusive face one sometimes wants to disappear along with the other unfortunate victims of the ravenous Otik. At other times, she is our heroine. The familial scenes , particularly at the dinner table, are funny as hell, and one you'll thing notice is that people are getting lit ALL the TIME. Svankmajer is not a cultural goalie, and heroically lets things be seen for how they really are.

Halfway through "Otik" it began to dawn on me that this curious little monster had a strange resemblance to all the characters we see. Watch, for instance, the way that . Alzbetka and her mother and father eat so voraciously and with disgusting abandon, how as people die appetites grow, as each character disappears into oblivion Karl stays more drunk. Otik is spreading his omnivorous appetite to everyone else (especially the pervert), and everyone's measure is cut very finely by the simple end which follows the fairy tale.

This is absolute must viewing for anyone interested in the bizarre.

Little Otik [Non-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]

Average customer rating:

Little Otik [Non-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
Product Features:

Region 2, PAL (Europe, Japan, South Africa and the Middle East including Egypt).
Requires multi-region DVD player for the US.

ASIN: 8372554617

Product Description

Based on a Czech folk tale, this is the story of Karel and Bozena a married couple who long to have a baby. Karel whilst digging up an tree stump decides to carves the roots into an image of a child and when his wife sees it her love brings the wooden form to life...

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