INSPIRED BY THE WRITINGS OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE AND EDGAR ALLAN POE, ŠVANKMAJER’S FIFTH FEATURE IS AS UNCOMPROMISING AND PROVOCATIVE AS ITS PREDECESSORS.
In pursuing his own interests, Švankmajer has always ignored filmic and other fashions. Lunacy is an attack on all forms of repression and a hymn to freedom. This dark, semi-comic fable tells of a timid youth befriended by a diabolical and deranged Marquis who takes him first to a remote château where blasphemous orgies are common, then to an asylum seemingly run by the inmates. Fear and desire fuel a deeply Freudian narrative that questions traditional notions of sanity and madness, care, cure and cruelty. With its live-action drama regularly punctuated by animated interludes involving raw meat, this skilful blend of horror movie and philosophical allegory is conceptually rigorous and politically subversive. As Švankmajer points out in a prologue, Lunacy is no mere aesthetic exercise but a tract on the treatment of insanity.