[Week 2] : Comments - Down The Cellar & Food

Down The Cellar

After observing the film, Down The Cellar by Jan Svankmajer, I can assure that I was never fully introduced to pure surrealism in film. At first, it gave me an eerie and cryptic feeling as if it was a form of horror. But later into the film, I found out that the film is more into exaggeration. I can see the obvious use of inanimate objects and the stop motion technique applied in the film. I believe each film created by Svankmajer has a deeper meaning into it. For down the cellar, I believe that Svankmajer is trying to imply that to get 'real food', one has to go through many hardships into obtaining them. In the film, the girl was chased around until the end but she still intend to face the horror just to obtain what she went down there for.

Food

For me, food was a bit more interesting than the one before. It had a short story line but was seperated into different 'episodes' which is Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. I believe  each one has a different message hidden in it but I still lack the understanding to decipher the messages. Overall, I can see that in each phase, the person would follow different steps just to enjoy a meal. In the end, each meal had its own dark secret like eating a limb, or in the worst case (like in the end of lunch) was to be eaten

Suprisingly, I enjoyed both the films despite being a bit 'disturbed'. It was entertaining to see a creation that was out of the box and highly creative. I would enjoy more films with a little slice of surrealism.

-F.N-