Compared with the current strong American and Japanese animation, Czech animation is very niche.
Most people's understanding of Czech animation may still be stuck in the famous animated series of the last century, "The Mole's Tale".
Douban score of 9.2, originally popular in the 1950s, enjoys a high reputation in the world, belongs to the kind of prizes to get soft.
In the mid-1980s, "The Story of the Mole" was introduced into China, and the cute little mole quickly gained everyone's love.
It can even compete with anime characters such as Astro Boy and Brother Ichigo introduced at about the same time, and Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in the United States.
But "The Mole's Tale" also brings a misunderstanding.
It misleads us into thinking that most of Czechoslovak animation takes this cute route.
The truth is that Czech animation is far more complex than we could have imagined.
Compared with "The Mole's Tale", the animation produced in the Czech Republic that I want to introduce to you today may be able to make us feel the essence of Czech animation more intuitively.
It's an animated film directed by Jan Verrich and released in 2007.
<h1>Czech Night</h1>
(One night in one city)
(This poster alone is maddening enough)
<h1>01</h1>
In every sense, Czech Horror Night is a very special animation.
First, it is "hyper-linguistic".
The animation is 67 minutes long, strictly speaking, there is not a single sentence of character dialogue, there is no important indicative text, and the whole process relies on character activities and environmental rendering to advance the plot.
Secondly, the content of the animation is extremely rich.
Because "Czech Horror" is a group portrait drama, there is no protagonist throughout, and there is no central plot that echoes from beginning to end.
In a little over 1 hour, it tells three main stories.
The second story is about a tree man.
The tree man looks like this:
Instead of the following tree man:
The first and third main stories can be further divided into several sub-stories.
Every story is about a different person, a different thing.
In addition, the most shocking point is the peculiarity of its animation form.
The Czech Republic has a nickname, called "Puppet Animation Kingdom", which refers to the Czech puppet animation art, which has a huge influence on the world.
As a traditional form of entertainment, puppetry has a very broad popular base and historical tradition in the Czech Republic.
When it comes to puppet animation, everyone should not feel particularly unfamiliar.
China also has many well-made puppet animations.
Classics such as "Ma Liang" (1955) and "The Story of Avanti" (1980) can be said to be the childhood memories of generations.
However, compared with Maryan and Avanti, the characters in "Czech Horror Night" are much "ugly" in appearance.
Some can even be described as "thriller".
The movements of the characters often reflect the mechanical feeling of being a puppet.
When the two sisters left, it was like this, a strong sense of strange behavior:
I have to say that you Czechs can really play.
<h1>02</h1>
The first story of the anime is the story of a group of people who live in a building.
What these people have in common is that they are residents of the same building.
Second, they seem to have a bit of a problem with their brains.
An old woman dressed in pink goes to the home of a bald old man and holds a "funeral" for her beloved dog.
The problem, however, is that the entire funeral took place while her dog was alive and well.
What is even more astonishing is that the funeral is done, and the old woman is involved with the old man.
Dogs on the side:
When I'm dead, you can't see anything?!
Then there are all kinds of ant lovers who abuse them:
The spectacled old man was obsessed with riding a small theater with blocks, and then placed an ant in it to watch the eyes of the animals in the circus and observe the whereabouts of the ants.
After observing for a while, the old man picked up a roll of newspaper, smashed the ants to death involuntarily, and also brought the small theater to demolition.
But the old man with glasses didn't stop there.
He threw the dead ants into the pile of insect carcasses on the side and continued the infinite cycle of building a small theater and playing with dead insects.
The old man used practical actions to tell the world how idle he was.
In a dimly lit room, a swarm of ants was circling a pile of white powder, using the magic of love.
Suddenly, the lamp on the table came on, and a thin, red-haired man sat down at the table.
I saw him scrape the white powder on the ants with iron pieces, and then pick up a long straw.
One end of the straw is inserted into his nostrils, and the other end is aimed at the white powder on the table, and he sucks hard.
In this way, the white powder was sucked into his body along with the ants...
There is also the story of a white-haired old woman and a donkey, which is equally puzzling.
Every time I went to feed the donkey, the white-haired old woman had to dress up carefully:
The garland on the head is worn, the lipstick on the mouth is smeared, and the strength interprets what is called "flower branch display".
I don't know if anyone can get this kind of advanced aesthetic.
Anyway, I can only say that "concubines can't do it"—(̄Д ̄))"
In the process of feeding, the white-haired old woman also combed the donkey's hair and played with a clockwork chicken pecking rice toy for the donkey.
Even when the donkey was asleep, she crept outside the house and pulled the rope that connected the pulley of the donkey bed, which swayed from side to side like a cradle.
This, this is really raising a donkey, not worshipping a god?
<h1>03</h1>
If the story of the first part of the animation mainly takes place in the rooms in the residential building, then the stage of the third part of the animation is the street outside the residential building.
That night, a series of supernatural events took place on the street, and it became quite unstable.
One of my favorite clips here is about an artist on the street who makes a living playing the accordion.
The artist's playing technique was poor, and passers-by said they would not buy his account.
Under the guidance of a passing master, in order to have a better sense of hearing, the artist took a knife and cut off one of his own ears, and then sewed the bloody ear that he had begged for.
However, the result did not give him what he wanted.
The accordion technique he played was still as bad as before.
The artist felt deceived.
Immediately after, a scene that the artist could never have dreamed of happened:
His hand suddenly went out of his control, and with a shudder he picked up a pen and began to draw.
He found that he had painted it too well, but inexplicably had a feeling of déjà vu.
In a state of shock, the artist picked up a book on the shelf and found that the paintings he had just drawn were exactly the same as the pictures on the book.
What's going on here?
At this time, he turned to Van Gogh's self-portraits, which turned out to be Van Gogh's masterpieces.
Looking at Van Gogh, who had no ears on the portrait, he touched the one he had newly installed.
The artist seemed to understand something.
Having said all this, I think you already have a general impression of Czech animation.
In the case of Czech Horror Nights, Czech animation is often filled with a kind of bottomless black humor.
There are many stream-of-consciousness and surreal components in its expressive approach.
In terms of content, Czech animation also often deliberately creates some seemingly illogical developments.
All these characteristics are related to the cultural traditions that have been bred in the Czech land.
It has both a mockery of reality and a concern for human nature.
As Czech Horror Nights shows us, everyone has their own unique habits.
Although it is not necessarily as heavy and exaggerated as serving donkeys and sucking ants in the anime, a person has quirks, and many times it is beyond reproach.
There will be many unsatisfactory things in life, but at the same time, it is also full of opportunities and possibilities.
Like the accordionist in the anime, God, when he closed the door to his musical dreams, also opened a window for him to become a master painter.
If that's the case, there's nothing to be afraid of.