Jan Svankmajer – Little Otik

Little Otik is typical of a Svankmajer piece, it deals with dark satirical subjects. The sterile couple long for a child so much that they dig up a tree stump, remotely resembling a child, then, with the power of their love  it becomes alive. The baby begins to devour its surroundings, including people and becomes a monster. At one point in the film the father is left with the task of killing the creature, this giving the audience a sense of moral value, begging the question of his love for Otik. This allowed me to recognise the thoughts of people such as families that are related to convicts, they struggle to see the bad in their relatives and have a shadowed approach to the reality.  The film is clearly surreal, and has some typical Svankmajer techniques within it, the messages within the film can generate different thoughts from some different people. I like the way that Svankmajer uses eary stop motion to express a view on certain subjects, his work can sometimes seem a little creepy, but there is always a valid reason for this.