Directed by:
Jan Svankmajer
Ever have one of those days where something bad or annoying happens, and then something else bad or annoying happens immediately after the first bad or annoying thing and then you just have to stop everything, stand there for a few seconds and take a deep breath just because you know if a third bad or annoying happens in such quick succession it may send you over the edge? Now imagine yourself trapped in a room where nothing works right and everything contained therein seems specifically designed just to annoy you.
A door opens and a man (Ivan Kraus) rolls inside a small, dingy, one room flat. The door then sews itself shut. He crawls around on the floor following chalk arrows, which first lead up to a doorway with a tattered blanket hanging over it. After slipping inside for a bathroom break, he crawls back out and continues following the arrows to another door. When he tries to open it and leave, the handle breaks off. He finds a mirror on the wall, but it casts a backwards reflection so he can only see the back of his head. When he attempts to light a furnace, water gushes out. He next moves on to a pair of framed photos on the wall. One is crooked, the other is straight. When he adjusts the crooked one, the straight one becomes crooked. Trying to step on a chair to adjust the crooked upper painting, the chair shrinks to where it's out of reach. And then the chair decides to beat him up. How long could you keep your sanity in this place?
A light bulb busts a hole through the wall. Possible escape route? Nope, a gloved fist pops out to punch him in the face. Well, at least there's some food on the table! Only the bread has been hollowed out by a rat, the soup spoon is filled with holes, a beer decides to shrink to a micro shot glass, an egg refuses to crack and a pack of dogs miraculously appear long enough to eat all of the potatoes. The man gets his hand stuck in a hole in the wall and then goes through a table and face splats into the soup. He would wash up... except that in lieu of water, the spigot produces a large rock that breaks the wash basin. Best one could do in this situation is perhaps sleep, but even lying still backfires when the bed reduces itself to pulp. Some nails strip him of his pants before Czech filmmaker Juraj Herz swings by in a last minute cameo as a man passing through the room holding a chicken and an axe.
People try to deduct different meanings from all this (partially because of the enigmatic final scene, which features many names scribbled on a wall [see if anything jumps out at you from the shots below]), while some deduct no meaning at all and just see this as a playful piece of surrealism. Either way, this 13-minute comedy (?) short is not recommended if you already suffer from high anxiety. As per the director's usual, things are spiced up with bits of stop motion animation throughout. There's also a great score from Zdenek Liska.
This has been released on numerous collections over the years. It's included in Kimstim's "The Collected Shorts of Jan Svankmajer" released in 2005 and the British Film Institute's "Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films" released in 2007. It was also released as part of a VHS and DVD collection of the director's shorts released in Japan back in 2002.
★★★
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