''Food'' ( cs, Jídlo) is a 1992 Czech animated
short film
A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...
directed by
Jan Švankmajer
Jan Švankmajer (; born 4 September 1934) is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his stop-motion animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Terr ...
that uses
claymation
Clay animation or claymation, sometimes plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine clay.
Tra ...
and
pixilation
Pixilation is a stop motion technique in which live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor beco ...
. It examines the human relationship with food by showing breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Plot
Breakfast
A man enters a room, sits down, and brushes the previous diner's leftovers onto the floor. Across from him sits another man with a placard attached to a chain hanging around his neck. The diner stands up and reads the placard one line at a time and follows the instructions. He puts money down the man's throat and pokes him in the eye. The man's shirt unbuttons itself, and a dumbwaiter rises up into where the man's chest should be. The diner takes his food, and punches the man in the chin with his third knuckle for his utensils. When he is done eating, he kicks the man's shin for a napkin. After wiping off his mouth, the diner convulses, and then goes limp. The man now comes to life, stretches, and places the placard on the former diner. He stands and puts another tally mark on the wall. Another diner comes in and the scenario is repeated with him. At the end, we see a line stretching down the hall and around the corner.
Lunch
Two diners, a business man and a vagabond, are unable to get the waiter's attention. They proceed to eat everything in sight: the flowers, their shoes, pants, shirt, underwear, plates, tablecloth, table, and chairs, now leaving both nude behind, The vagabond watches the business man and then eats what he eats. All the while they are eating whatever is on or around them, they try to get the waiter's attention whenever he passes by, but to no avail. In the end with everything else eaten, the business man eats his utensils. The vagabond also eats his. The business man then smiles, pulls his utensils from his mouth, and advances on the vagabond, who recoils in horror.
Dinner
In a luxurious
restaurant
A restaurant is a business that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearan ...
, a wealthy
gourmet
Gourmet (, ) is a cultural idea associated with the culinary arts of fine food and drink, or haute cuisine, which is characterized by refined, even elaborate preparations and presentations of aesthetically balanced meals of several contrasting, of ...
sits at a table adding many
sauce
In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi-solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to a dish. ''Sauce'' is a French word t ...
s and spices to his dish, which is hidden by the sheer number of
condiment
A condiment is a preparation that is added to food, typically after cooking, to impart a specific Flavoring, flavor, to enhance the flavor, or to complement the dish. A table condiment or table sauce is more specifically a condiment that is serv ...
s. This continues for a long time, and then he hammers a fork to his wooden left hand. The dish is then revealed to be his missing hand, which he proceeds to cut into. In a series of short and violent scenes, we are then shown an athlete eating his lower leg, a woman eating her breasts, and the last eater, who is about to eat his genitals. As he realises the presence of the camera, the man covers his genitals and shoos the camera away with his hand.
Reception
A
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
review called the film "caustically witty but slight." It goes on to say that "Švankmajer conceived the film in the 1970s, when it seemed too risky a political allegory to be made
..it now seems too simple a statement about how people are devoured by mechanistic states and each other."
Michael Nottingham pointed out that "the humour is particularly black in
he last
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
segment, mocking how delicate social ritual and conditioning are effective masks for brutal self-destruction."
Cast
*
Ludvík Šváb as Eater #1
*
Bedřich Glaser as Eater #2
*
Jan Kraus as Eater #3
*
Pavel Marek
Pavel (Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian and Macedonian: Павел, Czech, Slovene, Romanian: Pavel, Polish: Paweł, Ukrainian: Павло, Pavlo) is a male given name. It is a Slavic cognate of the name Paul (derived from the Greek Pavlos). Pavel ...
as Eater
*
Josef Fiala
Josef Fiala (''Joseph Fiala'') (3 February 1748 – 31 July 1816), was a Czech composer, oboist, viola da gamba virtuoso, cellist, and pedagogue of the Classical period.
Life
He was born in Lochovice in Bohemia and began his musical career ...
as Eater #4
*
Karel Hamr as Eater #5
References
External links
*
*
{{Jan Svankmajer
1992 films
Czechoslovak animated films
Films directed by Jan Švankmajer
Films with live action and animation
Czechoslovak animated short films
Czech animated films
Surrealist films
1990s stop-motion animated films
Pixilation films
1992 animated films
Czech animated comedy films