Behind the Couch

Head over to Paracinema.net to check out my latest instalment of Audiodrome: Music in Film . This month my ears have mainly been awash with Zdeněk Liška’s eerily beautiful score for Karel Kachnya’s 1976 curio Malá Morská Víla ( The Little Mermaid ). Melodic orchestrations, choral pieces, strange percussive arrangements, song, and pulsing oceanic sound effects all swirl together to form a highly evocative and bewitching soundtrack indeed. And banish any notion that Malá Morská Víla is a schmaltzy, Disney-esque saccharine-fest; it’s a deeply melancholy and moody meditation on identity, doomed love and self sacrifice. That it was made during a period of extreme censorship in Czechoslovakia also speaks volumes. Also! Paracinema Magazine has been nominated for a Rondo Award this year! If you're so inclined, you can head here and vote for it under "Best Magazine." And, while you’re there, think about voting for issue 11, The Women's Issue, in the write-in section ...

2000 Dir. Jan Svankmajer Little Otik is the troubling tale of a couple whose desperation for a baby pushes them to the brink of sanity. In an attempt to alleviate his wife Bozena’s distress, Karel offers her a tree root which she accepts as their child. Eventually however, they realise to their horror that the root has a voracious appetite that can’t be quelled by milk and carrot soup alone. Not since  Eraserhead  has parenthood seemed like such a nightmare. Svankmajer is renowned for his ground-breaking and innovative use of stop-motion animation in his films. Many of his surreal short films comprise of his experiments in this medium. Svankmajer imbues his animated creations with so much life and character, more so in fact than those of his human/live action characters. Indeed Little Otik seems to highlight this trait of Svankmajer’s and even steps it up a notch. The human characters are drawn with the broadest of stokes, however the writhing mass of roots and twigs...