23/05/2023 - Jan Švankmajer and his partner in life and creation Eva Švankmajerová open the doors of their wunderkammers in a surrealist swan song movie

Like many apocryphal quotes, Milos Forman claiming Czech animation giant Jan Švankmajer is the result of Disney + Buñuel really does stand the test of time. In his latest film, Kunstkamera, the master behind Picnic with Weissmann (1968), The Fall of the House of Usher (1980), Alice (1988), The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (1990), Food (1992), Insects (2018) and many other nightmaresque classics sentimentally sits down with ‘old friends’ – in this instance a plethora of memorabilia, artefacts and artworks spread out around the house in Horní Staňkov which belongs to him and his partner in life and in creation Eva Švankmajerová.

Said to be his last film, Kunstkamera premiered at Ji.hlava IDFF (2022) and was recently shown in a special screening at the Anifilm International Animated Film Festival. But rather than a swan song, it feels more like the Czech surrealist has written a ‘farewell letter, just in case’, which he’ll end up not needing to use. Because he’s not ready to let go. Kunstkamera is an Odyssey through the legacy of the director and his partner, and it’s a kind of homecoming in that sense.

Kunstkamera is an odd ode to the house itself, a universe which the Švankmajers have built around themselves, creating their interior in the same way they’d stage a set. So many of the objects we see look familiar, because they’ve starred as props and protagonists in his films or have provided inspiration for Švankmajer’s mutants and metamorphoses. Švankmajer himself is a ghostly presence. He never reveals himself, but the sound of creaking floorboards and squeaky doors hints at the owner’s presence. Is the spectator a simple voyeur in this world? Or does Švankmajer willingly invite us in, offering us a cup of tea and declaring “mi casa es su casa”?

Despite these many objects resembling familiar characters and props from Švankmajer’s filmography, the aim of Kunstkamera isn’t to satisfy a cinephile taste for nostalgia. Only when we stop hunting for “Easter Eggs” and accept the film for what it is – a trip through the director’s mind, soul and environment – do we find ourselves enjoying a wonderful journey down a rabbit hole. The film can feel a tad overwhelming at first, without narration or explanations, but it soon becomes magical once you let yourself go.

The poetry of alchemy

Švankmajer has his own concepts of taxidermy. Fossils, molluscs and remains of animals are arranged in strange metamorphoses. Biblical and satanic, grotesque and angelic, perverted and naïve, the collection features bizarrely assembled figures, ingenious statues, sketches and notes, and a plethora of various uncanny knickknacks, also exploring the history of art brut and art grotesque. It’s as if the director is conducting his own research into teratology – the study of abnormalities in organisms’ physiological and physical development - by creating this idiosyncratic monsterology. An inexplicable Švankmajerian logic hides beneath the arrangement of these quirky items.

In an interview with Cineuropa, Švankmajer previously revealed that Emperor Rudolf II’s Kunstkamera served as an inspiration for this assemblage. Traditionally, cabinets of curiosities proudly exhibit indigenous art seen through the colonial prism. It’s difficult to say whether that’s the case here: many of the relics appear to be gathered from colonised nations and from indigenous peoples from various regions of the world. Švankmajer might be said to be flirting with statements over colonial legacy and the history of obtaining (and appropriating) objects from other cultures. 

We might have similar mixed feelings about the relatively long screen time devoted to “perverted art”. Wooden and painted phalluses and breasts, Kamasutra pages… Is it a healthy display of fetishes or an innocent provocation by Švankmajer? The director has never shied away from dark and sexual themes. Consider Down to the Cellar (1983), depicting unwelcome sexual tension between an underage girl and a middle-aged man. Or ‘Dimensions of Dialogue’ (1983), where lovers made of clay merge erotically, only to wrestle and tear each other apart minutes later.

Here, freakishness is the new normal and normality is surrealism. As an ensemble, the artefacts are so surreal that they become normal and vice versa. Take, for instance, a simple, almost-empty coffee mug – compared with the rest, it feels out of place, bringing the viewer back to reality for a split second.

The camera (courtesy of DoPs – Jan Růžička and Adam Oĺha) gently caresses every relic. It shifts and glides from shelf to shelf, from token to token, closely echoing the rhythm of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons which features in the soundtrack (sometimes reworked or played backwards, but hardly noticeable). Each season dictates the rhythm and sets the mood. Spring and summer bring more jump cuts, dynamic pace and light colours, while winter and autumn correspond to the darker corners of Švankmajer’s collection, representing basement collectibles and more earthly-toned objects.

Mythology over history

In 1962, Jean Cocteau - another mad thinker - feared oblivion and recorded a 23-minute video where he addresses the youth of the year 2000. Cocteau hoped that modern-day people would still hitchhike, dance the twist and wouldn’t have turned into robots. He accepts the fact he’ll remain a ghost, so long as he’s remembered. “I’ve always preferred mythology over history. If I have the good fortune to live on in your minds, it will be in mythological form,” he insisted, believing that legends are superior to history itself.

Does Švankmajer dread oblivion? Will these things disappear? Will the house fall down like Edgar Allen Poe’s House of Usher, or be sold to a young family moving to the suburbs, filling the house with IKEA furniture and painting the walls beige? No.

André Breton seemed to have both Cocteau and Švankmajer all figured out in his 1924 “Surrealist Manifesto”, where he outlined ideas of madness and naivety, as well as the preservation of human duality and creativity, which are all prevalent themes in Kunstkamera.

When quoting Picasso, Cocteau asserts that it takes a long time to grow young again. Both Švankmajer and Cocteau cherished the idealism of youth while respecting the maturity of old age: yes, Mr. Cocteau, we will learn to grow young again; no, Mr. Švankmajer, your house won’t fall down.

Kunstkamera is a poetically modest but expressive testimony of a life lived. It’s a house, yes, but we’re also warmly invited into a creative universe revealing Mr. and Mrs. Švankmajer’s unique perception of the world with its paradoxes and wonders.

Credits
Title Kunstkamera
Country Czech Republic
Sales agent Athanor
Year 2022
Directed by Jan Švankmajer
Screenplay Jan Švankmajer