Food (film)

Infobox Film
name = Jídlo


caption = The film's poster
director = Jan Švankmajer
producer = Jaromír Kallista
eproducer = Keith Griffiths
Michael Havas
writer = Jan Švankmajer
starring =
music =
cinematography = Svatopluk Malý
editing = Marie Zemanová
distributor = Zeitgeist Films
released = 1992
runtime = 17 min.
country = Czech Republic
awards =
language = There is no dialogue.
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id = 1:184472
imdb_id = 0104285

Jídlo (-Czech, meaning "the food" in English) is a 1992 animated short film that uses claymation and live action directed by Jan Švankmajer. It examines human relationship to food by showing breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Plot

Breakfast

A man enters a room, sits down, and brushes off the previous diner's left overs 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 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, table cloth, table, and chairs. The vagabond watches the business man and then eats what he eats. 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.

Dinner

A surreal restaurant where the diners cannibalize parts of themselves is shown. A rich man sits at a table adding many sauces and spices to his dish, which is hidden by the sheer number of condiments (This is shown in the film poster). This continues for a long time, and then we see him hammer a fork to a wooden left hand. He then starts to eat his own hand. We also see an athlete eating his lower leg, a woman eating her breasts (this is also shown in the film poster), and a man eating his genitals. The camera moves in and the man covers his genitals and shoos the camera away with his hand.

Reception

A New York Times review called the film "caustically witty but slight." It goes on to say that "Švankmajer conceived the film in the 1970's, 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 [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9901E2D7103EF930A25757C0A962958260&sec=&pagewanted=print] ."

External links

* [http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/07/jan_svankmajers.html Links to Jídlo]
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104285/ IMDb record]