{"id":12988,"date":"2019-02-07T20:00:04","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T01:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=12988"},"modified":"2019-02-03T17:20:40","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T22:20:40","slug":"insect-2018-jan-svankmajer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/12988","title":{"rendered":"Insect (2018, Jan Svankmajer)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A theater group &#8211; not a very good one &#8211; is rehearsing the 1921 satire <em>The Insect Play<\/em>, but the guy playing Dung Beetle (Jir\u00c3\u00ad L\u00e1bus, of a fascinating-sounding 1994 version of <em>Amerika<\/em>) keeps hallucinating insects (real and stop-motion) while learning his lines.<\/p>\n<p>From the very beginning, Svankmajer and his crew appear onscreen, like the DVD extras have been cut into the feature.  After a scene it&#8217;ll show the filming, the animation, direction, insect wrangling, sound effects (with constant scraping and clanking sounds plus the insect patter, they&#8217;re great throughout), or interview the actors about their dreams.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image19\/insect1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Fun movie, and only 93 minutes, a breeze to watch.  To that point, it doesn&#8217;t seem like Svankmajer&#8217;s most consequential film, nor does it appear to be some kind of final statement on his career, unless I&#8217;m missing something about the Insect Play.  Ungenerously, one could say choice of subject combined with the mechanics of behind-the-scenes production is the last word on his preference against humans and their messy realities.  Jan: &#8220;I direct it like an animated film or puppet theater &#8211; short takes, minimal movement of the camera, stylized acting, no psychology, as if the actors had wires attached to the head and strings on the arms.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image19\/insect2.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Watching movies from last year&#8217;s Sundance and Rotterdam this week&#8230; this one premiered in Rotterdam&#8217;s Signatures section, playing with <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/12572\">The Wandering Soap Opera<\/a><\/em>, <em>Lover for a Day<\/em>, <em>Mrs. Fang<\/em> and <em>Lek and the Dogs<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A theater group &#8211; not a very good one &#8211; is rehearsing the 1921 satire The Insect Play, but the guy playing Dung Beetle (Jir\u00c3\u00ad L\u00e1bus, of a fascinating-sounding 1994 version of Amerika) keeps hallucinating insects (real and stop-motion) while learning his lines. From the very beginning, Svankmajer and his crew appear onscreen, like the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1049,96,91,318,984,265,590,1308],"class_list":["post-12988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2010s","tag-animation","tag-filmmaking","tag-insects","tag-jan-svankmajer","tag-meta","tag-stop-motion","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12988"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13004,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12988\/revisions\/13004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}