Review of Little Otik (2001) by Joshc — 07 Apr 2008
For Tolkien, fairy tales were not concerned with possibility so much as desirability: "If they awakened desire, satisfying it while often whetting it unbearably, they succeeded. . . . " In that sense, Jan Svankmajer's Little Otik is an even more authentic fairy story, dealing as it does with the yearning for what is impossible and a rebellion against the real.
In his fourth feature, Svankmajer has transposed a grotesque Czech folktale about a childless couple who raise a tree stump as their baby to contemporary Prague. Filled with strollers, the city is likewise an incubator for fantasy.
The storklike, uptight Karel (Jan Hartl) discovers babies inside melons and sees infants in the marketplace, fished from tanks, weighed, and wrapped in newspapers to go. To tease his pining wife, Bozena (Veronika Zilková), Karel uproots a tree stump and presents it to her.
This review of Little Otik (2001) was written by Joshc on 07 Apr 2008.
Little Otik has generally received positive reviews.
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