Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27270 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-06-16
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Czech
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 126 minutes

Special Features
DVD Technical Information:

• Video Aspect Ratio: Feature – 4:3
  
• Main soundtrack: Czech stereo
  
• Subtitles: English
  
• Disc Format: Single sided, dual layer – DVD 9
  
• Feature length: 126 mins approx.
  
• Colour: PAL

Synopsis
Jan Svankmajer's fourth feature is the story of a thirtysomething couple who, despite their infertility, yearn to have a baby. When Karel (Jan Hartl), the husband, digs up a stump that resembles a newborn, he varnishes it and presents it to his wife, Bozena (Veronika Zilkova), hoping to comfort her and fill the void in their lives. To his astonishment, Bozena immediately begins treating the stump like a real child, and the two dub the stump Otik. Karel's astonishment grows when Bozena manages to nurse Otik into a mewling, living baby, a newborn with a wooden body and a voracious appetite. It isn't long before Otik devours the family cat and the postman, forcing the couple into a quandary. However, Alzbetka, their precocious pre-adolescent neighbor, has discovered the couple's secret by reading a Czech folk tale that parallels the strange occurrences next door, giving the young girl an idea of her own for Otik.
As in Svankmajer's superb 1996 film CONSPIRATORS OF PLEASURE, the director uses his trademark stop-motion animation sparingly and focuses on his characters' desires, invariably making them seem perverse (food is always particularly grotesque in Svankmajer's universe). Brilliant, funny, and frightening, LITTLE OTIK is a wonderfully entertaining and disturbing film.

From the Back Cover
From Jan Svankmajer, award-winning director of Faust, comes a dark, surreal fable about parental responsibility. Borenza and Karel long to have a baby; so does Alzbetka, their next-door neighbour in need of a playmate. One day, Karel uproots a tree stump that looks like a child and, after he’s whittled it into a baby-like form, Bozena’s runaway maternal desire brings it to life. Little Otik (as they name it) has an insatiable appetite, devouring first the cat and then the postman. In desperation, Karel locks the monstrous tree-child in the cellar to starve it to death, but unbeknownst to them Alzbetka adopts the changeling. She feeds Otik in secret, offering him the building’s residents when leftovers aren’t enough.

Customer Reviews

Stumped...
This is just hilarious. Although over-acted, Svankmajer has created a sickening, terrifying update of the Czech fairytale Otesanek, set in a block of flats in an anonymous Czech town and a country dacha where what begins as a benign wooden doll for a childless couple turns into a ravening monstrosity lurking in the cellar, looked after by a girl whose loneliness turns her into the devil incarnate when Otik begins to get too hungry for leftover soup and dumplings.

The stop-motion animation is worthy of the noble tradition of Eastern European film, and does not attempt to make it too realistic, a fact which tends to jar with the gritty reality of the film (particularly the editing when they cut to Otik can give a bit of a jerky effect to otherwise seamless footage) but it fits with the wild and wonderful nature of European storytelling and the tragicomic story, with a slow transition from a hungry baby to a gargantuan godzilla ripping the vital organs out of passersby.

Bozena Horakova's innocence and naivete give some insight into how the mothers of real tearaways feel when their son or daughter goes off the rails, and helps us understand the powerful bond between mother and child which can forgive everything, even chewing up the postman ("well, he *was* going to retire anyway...") or the social worker ("she *was* an arrogant old busybody..."). Her desperation is contrasted with the nonchalant responses of Stadlerova, her husband and daughter, and the other residents, all of whom stand and watch Bozena's descent into madness and Karel's ineffectual attempts to destroy the creature before it is too late.

Baby feeding frenzy
This is a film about babies and food. It depicts graphic images of food in a rather unappetizing manner but conveys hard truths about food in an unpleasant context. In a grotesque erruption in the perception of food as potentially repulsive, we have here a baby that demands flesh, including human flesh in growing amounts.

Little Otik is born to an Eastern European family living in a flat. These people are not rich but seem to live in a sort of socialist setting with good medical and welfare provisions. The blonde mother to be is rather attractive but she and her husband are both infertile.

Obsessed with children, the husband gives the wife a log of wood as a baby substitute and this turns into a cooing, gurgling monster. You will never see babies in quite the same way after you've seen this film.

The neighbours of this couple are very decent but their daughter starts spying on the pregnancy and why the expectant couple seem so secretive about the kind of baby they have. She unravels the secret but can only relate the mostrosity of the situtation to herself - by reading a children's story aloud that parallels the real life events.

Everything is graphical and surreal - a fairy tale with the most hideous outcomes coming true. In the end, I don't really care too much about whether the film actually needs a decisive conclusion or makes too much sense - it is all done with a lot of thought, attention to detail and the script is simple and delightfully human (in an interesting alien tongue).

The whole thing is a sort of "What if" writ large and the scenes are often shocking and grotesque though the monster cries and shrieks like any ordinary baby, no matter how large it gets.

Metaphorically the monster represents children who refuse to grow up or demand too much; an exploration of the parent/offspring relationship; how food can be consuming in many senses of the word.

I found the main character - the little blonde neighbour's daughter very captivating. She is so sensible, inscrutable, clever and caring and knows exactly what's on everyone's mind and that mischief is fun. The old paedophile who keeps on trying to grab her becomes one of her prime victims, thanks to the monster and she knows exactly how to lure him. There are fetishtic close ups of lips, feet, food and associated items emphasising textures and latent greed which is somewhat unnerving yet draws you in. The visuals are of course inimitable to Svankmajer.

Really strange, sharp, bold. Not everyone will like this film but it is literally "food for thought" and pretty awesome in its matter of fact brutality, ironic humour and out of this world quality. This is one of a kind - though perhaps with shades of a former US film about a man eating, talking, indoor plant and a dark experimental film I saw of an ill treated child, growing for himself a grandmother by planting a seed in dirt.