This is the first short created by The Brothers Quay, and it shows. Their obsessive animation and dust-bunny mise-en-scene still hold, but the flow is a little off and it doesn't seem to go anywhere.
I still think it's a very incredible piece of work. These guys are deranged in their ability to create an almost perfect and seamless movement out of inanimate characters, and then to put them into a context beyond normal perception. To believe that dolls and small human-shaped figures are alive requires both the precise eye of the filmmakers (which they have in surplus, it seems) and a strong suspension of disbelief in the viewers (which is why, I think, stop-motion isn't used as often as other forms of animation... it takes a lot more work and often with a lot smaller pay-off). The fact that the Quay brothers can help create that suspension of disbelief AND put it into a confined dreamscape outside of the comfort zone of most viewers is testament alone to their skill, before even getting into the works themselves.
That's the reason why I don't think this short is as good as their later works. The problem with the flow is the same as the problem to the snippets of verse they keep cutting to: in terms of syntax, the sentences make sense, but in terms of general understanding, they're nonsense. They're either poetry with a deeper meaning missing because of the cuts between the lines, or they're just random statements.
I suppose one could argue that absurdity and nonsense is part of the point of this work. That's fair enough. This movie isn't bad, by any means. I just think it's not as good as their later works.
--PolarisDiB
I still think it's a very incredible piece of work. These guys are deranged in their ability to create an almost perfect and seamless movement out of inanimate characters, and then to put them into a context beyond normal perception. To believe that dolls and small human-shaped figures are alive requires both the precise eye of the filmmakers (which they have in surplus, it seems) and a strong suspension of disbelief in the viewers (which is why, I think, stop-motion isn't used as often as other forms of animation... it takes a lot more work and often with a lot smaller pay-off). The fact that the Quay brothers can help create that suspension of disbelief AND put it into a confined dreamscape outside of the comfort zone of most viewers is testament alone to their skill, before even getting into the works themselves.
That's the reason why I don't think this short is as good as their later works. The problem with the flow is the same as the problem to the snippets of verse they keep cutting to: in terms of syntax, the sentences make sense, but in terms of general understanding, they're nonsense. They're either poetry with a deeper meaning missing because of the cuts between the lines, or they're just random statements.
I suppose one could argue that absurdity and nonsense is part of the point of this work. That's fair enough. This movie isn't bad, by any means. I just think it's not as good as their later works.
--PolarisDiB