Review of Little Otik (2001) by Ld P — 22 Nov 2009

Otesnek, also known as Little Otik or Greedy Guts, is a 2000 surrealist film by Czech couple Jan vankmajer and Eva vankmajerov. The movie is a comedic live action, stop motion-animated feature film set mainly in a poor apartment building in the Czech Republic.

Yes Bizarre is the right word for this film. Otik is almost an authentic fairy story, dealing as it does with the yearning for what is impossible and a rebellion against the real. 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.

The baby formula and carrot soup are not enough to feed the little monster and mysteriously, people begin to disappear. Otik the baby becomes the misshapen cannibal log baby. Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer creates a unique blend of live-action and animation.

The film is cautionary tale about the dangers of being consumed by one's deepest desires and how the routines of middle-class living rob a person's imagination. In this film one of the main characters is an animated stick figure or clay figure.

"Little Otik" is too strange not to turn off some, but for those who can go the increasingly macabre distance, its sheer power can confound and enthrall. This is a fable. "Little Otik" is handmade; cobbled together from dirt, wood, imagination he is almost a dream.

The directors' animation does not have the polished look of digitized Hollywood extravaganzas, but a curious, unruly life to them which I found infinitely more interesting. Svankmajer has used the mediums of film and animation to question the possibilities that blur the line between fable and reality.

Really the film becomes one that deals (in a satirical way) with the Western world's obsession with breeding and children. The plot is fairly absurd-they are raising a tree stump as a baby. But after all the director is a surrealist.

It is the strangest tale of maternal love I could have ever imagined. The movie effectively demonstrates that, no matter how monstrous your child may be, any amount of justification will be employed to protect it.

It is a very sick and frightening parody of a fable. In the end the film becomes rather tedious but I still LOVED IT This is as weird a movie as I have seen in quite a while.. 4 stars but not for all viewers.