Dimensions of Dialogue
1982 · 12m · Czechoslovakia
Directed by Jan Švankmajer
Genres: animation, experimental, surrealism
Tones: darkly comic, provocative, surreal, tense
A surrealist stop-motion triptych exploring the failures of human communication through three segments: clay heads consuming and homogenizing each other, lovers merging and destroying themselves, and figures exchanging mismatched objects in futile dialogue.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Švankmajer turning conversation into mutual cannibalism by clay heads made of typewriters and vegetables — finally, a film that gets it. Twelve minutes of the most accurate communication theory ever animated.
Svankmajer's Arcimboldo-headed grotesque is the rare avant-garde object that converts its formal extremity into immediate political force, a direct ancestor of the Brothers Quay and early Gilliam. Essential.
Svankmajer's clay heads grinding each other into homogenized paste is some of the most visceral stop-motion ever animated - 11:46 of perfectly calibrated escalation. The Arcimboldo-composite mouths chewing real objects make you feel each consonant.
Reviews
Considered Švankmajer's masterpiece, mixing excellent design with virtuoso animation and astonishingly original story material.
Terry Gilliam selected the film as one of the ten best animated films of all time — a vivid, vulgar, gross, funny, and thought-provoking study of dialogue gone horribly awry.
Festivals
- Berlin International Film Festival 1983, Golden Bear for Best Short Film
- Annecy International Animation Film Festival 1983, Grand Prix