Write a short review, analysing, comparing and contrasting
the two films, in relation to the above.
Jiri Trnka, The Hand,
1965
Dusan Vukotic and Zagreb
Film, Surogat (Ersatz), 1961
The two films that are going
to be discussing both present the theme ‘imprisonment’, or being ‘mentally
imprisoned’, both animations were produced to convey a message of how people
felt and lived during those times when dictatorship was present.
The film, ‘Surogat’ animated
and produced by Dusan Vukotic and Zagreb Film is a 2D animation whether or not
it was computer animated. This does not affect the film except that it was
trying to tell the audience in a light-hearted way about how artificial objects
of this world do not matter and cause emotions such as anger, jealousy and
tragedy.
The country Yugoslavia at the
time was under communist control, this was a time where everything was owned by
the state or government, the people though lived on the same social status
could not choose what they wanted and only had what they needed. This obviously
eliminates the result of artificiality but it means that there is one person at
the top that has control over all the people in that country thus the idea of
people living in a very controlled world is not ideal or considered to be a
‘utopia’.
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In the animation, the tourist inflates an entire village and controls what’s in it from what he eats to who he wants
to spend time with, mainly a female. The story progresses to where the female
sees a better suitor than him and decides to spend her time with the hunky man,
the tourist then chases after them to the other island they occupy and deflates
the female and the hunky man is saddened by his loss and deflates himself.
This where vengeance and
tragedy provoked by jealousy brings the loss of a human life. Though the way it
is portrayed in this animation is comedic because the idea of inflating and
deflating characters does not really show the true meaning of the message
trying to be conveyed. The colour and lighting of the animation does not change,
it does not show the difference between day and night, the tone stays the same
so that does not aid in conveying the sad message, however the soundtrack does
help when the hunky man dies, the music turns harsh and the tone deep. This,
compared to the stop motion animation, by Jiri Trnka title ‘’The Hand’’ has a
soundtrack that compliments the storyline. The soundtrack begins joyful and
happy at the beginning when the puppet wakes up and has a joyful start to the
day, the instrument used could have been a violin or trumpet, might be both but
these instruments create powerful sounds and are more noticed when there is a
switch from the white hand to the black hand during the animation. The tone of
this animation is definitely not as light-hearted as ‘Surogat’ and the lighting
changes as the mood changes. The lighting compared to ‘Surogat’ does change in ‘The
Hand’, starting off with rich, bright colours but when the mood changes the
light becomes dim lit and black backgrounds are being used more.
However, their historical and
political problems raised in both animations are very similar in contrast
because during the time ‘Surogat’ was released, Yugoslavia was a communist
country during that time. The reasons behind both animators using this medium
to create their art instead of using real people was probably because this way
their work would not jeopardize their lives if they spoke out to the rules they
lived under or aggravate the communists into forcing them to stop their
practice if tried to encourage ideology or personal opinions of the political
system.
Jiri Trnka was lucky to be
able to live under the communist conditions and still practice his art, his use
of puppets in his animation was considered to be innocent which could be the
reason why he used them a lot in other films. In the animation ‘The Hand’, the
puppet starts off his day happy until a hand disrupts it and orders it to
create a hand sculpture and nothing else, the puppet’s resistance to this idea
costs him his freedom and life, towards the end the puppet’s loses all emotion
as opposed to the beginning of the film and becomes lifeless. This can be a
symbol of how living under the rule causes these effets. Jiri Trnka, was
promised a state funeral and this is depicted in this animation, basically
predicting his own death the same hand that forced him is the same hand
saluting him at the end, instead wearing a black glove which definitely can be
connoted as being evil. The film was banned from screening for 20 years in
Czechoslovakia. Jiri Trnka shows how
trapped he is living in this regime through the symbolism of ‘puppetry’, the
black hand is seen controlling the strings when the puppet is sculpting and
this is a very obvious message being conveyed, it could be what lead to the
film being banned. The film prompted the period of time called ‘Prague Spring
in 1968’ so you could say that function of the film was to make people wake up
and stand up for their own opinions, so it means that the target audience was
aimed at people aged 18 and older who worked and lived under these restrictions,
this is probably the same target audience for the ‘Surogat’ animation. This
could be when totalitarianism was present both in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
highlighted in different ways but aiming more at the public than political
people.
In conclusion, the film ‘Surogat’
has a light-hearted tone with a serious meaning underlying, this could have
been done purposely so as not to create conflict with the communist parties and
cause an outrage so the comedic storyline is used to help cover that. Both
films have the characters either humming or just expressing their emotions
through actions instead of speech; this is probably done again so no misleading
words can be used against the artists to raise a case against them. These films
are an example of artists using their work to create a better improvement to
the way people lived in those harsh times under communist control, which is the
main theme in link with the idea of ‘imprisonment’ that was brought earlier in
the essay.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- http://www.rembrandtfilms.com/jiritrnka.htm
- http://www.afocr.org/communist-totalitarianism
- http://www.awn.com/mag/issue5.04/5.04pages/dutkatrnka2.php3
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