Philadelphia-born identical twins Stephen and Timothy Quay have lived in London since the 1970s, making stop-motion animation shorts that have won them an international following. Masters of atmosphere and texture, obsessed with decaying and distressed surfaces, the Brothers Quay have made haunting enigmatic films in which old broken dolls, bits of cloth and paper and metal and feathers, chunks of meat and bone all combine themselves into new surrealistic entities. Whether concocting a dreamlike take on Polish author Bruno Schulz for their Street of Crocodiles or contributing special animation for Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” video, these visionary artists have staked out a world of their own. It may border on the no-man’s land of David Lynch (especially Eraserhead) or the unpredictable terrains of the great Czech animator and director Jan Svankmajer (Alice, Faust). In the end, however, it looks and sounds like nothing so much as Quayville.
With Institute Benjamenta, the Brothers Quay have created their first live-action feature. Not that this elliptical tale of a deteriorating school for butlers has very much action – life either, for that matter. Everyone seems to exist in a dream state of repression and servitude, even the Institute’s owners. Some viewers may find themselves growing restless as the entropic Institute eventually slows down to a dead halt. (Lech Jankowski’s sometimes jazzy score shrewdly brings an extra dynamic of vitality and spontaneity to the oppressive proceedings.) Audiences attuned to the Quays’ style, however, will relish this film as an exciting development in their work. Once again, the nostalgic and the pathetic, the uncanny and the subtly comic, all co-exist in a closed, dank, dusty universe. Mark Rylance as the aspiring pupil, Alice Krige as his haughty teacher, and Gottfried John as her cruel brother are completely at home in this bizarre zone; they seem just as naturally a part of this world as the animated tools and puppets of the Quays’ earlier work. Quay purists may miss their usual style of cinema; the good news for those folks is the trailer for Institute Benjamenta, which is vintage Quay, almost entirely animated. The rest of their admirers will gain new respect for these gifted filmmakers.
(This review first appeared in Film Journal International, April/May 1996.)
Link to:
Film: Reviews: Contents
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 