Really Surprised!

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The animated films of twins Stephen and Timothy Quay succeed more as art than entertainment, drawing heavily on ideas and imagery made popular by the Surrealists, adapted to fit their own highly individual obsessions. Using found objects (broken dolls, scraps of cloth, odd bits and pieces of junk) the Quay's create abstract and obscure short narratives noteworthy for their incredible precision and fluid mobility. The craftsmanship is startling and inventive, the mood haunting and dreamlike, but like most Surrealist art the meaning is often infuriatingly oblique. Like many other of their films I've seen, 'Street of Crocodiles' achieves a hypnotic flow of miniature detail torn straight from the subconscious mind.

Devotees of Jan Svankmajer and Kafka, identical twins Stephen and Timothy Quay distill every disturbing dream you've ever had into a decidedly unsettling short film. American by birth, the twins seem European by sensibility and have settled in London to make their films. Street of Crocodiles is one of their better known efforts and is obliquely influenced by Polish writer Bruno Schulz, who published the memoirs of his solitary life under the title, Sklepy Cynamonowe (literally translated as The Cinnamon Shops, although generally known in the English speaking world as Street of Crocodiles). The Quay's short follows a gaunt puppet who is released from his strings as he explores his bizarre surroundings: rooms full of dark shadows, unexplained machinery and strange eyeless dolls. Everything has a sense of decay and Victorian melancholy. There is a notion of a plot, possibly dealing with sexual tension, but really Street of Crocodiles is about establishing a mood and a nightmarish and deeply sinister world. The Quay's use of tracking shots and selective focus is unparallelled in the world of stop motion.

It's interesting to notice how many other film makers have been influenced by the Quay visual aesthetic. The movie The Cell has a few scenes with sets obviously inspired by Street of Crocodiles. And of course, just about every Tool video borrows heavily from the Quays. It's both a weakness and a strength that Quay films seem to wander aimlessly in a stream of conscious. The weakness is that it can get somewhat tedious and can result in the loss of ones attention periodically. I tend to drift in and out, especially having seen their shorts numerous times on DVD. But this experience also serves the function of the films. The Quay's seem intent on more accurately recreating a dream experience and to chronicle an aimless journey through the human psyche. It takes some courage and trust to abandon a standard coherence and to risk giving up the attention of the audience in order to keep your intentions pure. If nothing else, I can appreciate and admire the artistry involved with these films. Street of Crocodiles is probably one of their stronger shorts.

Not an imitation, rather an homage to Jan Svankmajer, the Borther's Quay can be a little unsettling to the uninitiated. They are well worth the price of admission and then some. Always a rich tapestry of the imagination gone wild, this collection of short films is effective both for the heart and the head. That these brothers have not gone on to blockbuster status is either a testiment to their great artistry or a testiment to La La land's great stupidity in not scooping up the brightest minds in the business. Here is somthing new.