< BACK
Jan Svankmajer's original screenplay for
Food,
written in 1970 and published twenty years later in Romboid in Slovakia,
was filmed in 1991 without major changes, which is not always the case with
Svankmajer. The division into three parts, 'Breakfast', 'Lunch' and 'Dinner', is
also a division into three levels on which the action develops, and from which
it is viewed. The first episode, 'Breakfast', seems to take place on the lowest
level. Three people, Mr Babický, Mr Albert and Mr Cecil, gradually exchange the
two roles of customer and humanoid vending-machine which, after a standard and
confusing set of instructions has been carried out, produces an equally standard
Czech take-away of sausage, bread and mustard on a paper plate, and beer in a
paper cup. On following further instructions, the customer is given a plastic
knife and fork, and a paper napkin.
Several critics have
assumed this to be an allegory of the fast food trend, but this interpretation
ignores the fact that Svankmajer conceived the scene at a time when McDonald's
hamburgers were a thing of the distant future. A more pertinent comparison would
be with Chaplin's Modern Times (1936), but even this similarity is
suspect. While the Modern Times machine was a caricature of attempts to
speed up the feeding process, saving time in order to ensure the more efficient
use of the work force in manufacturing, here, in the neglected and bespattered
surroundings of 'Breakfast', time dawdles with the same lethargy as it did when
the ghost of market economy breathlessness haunted no one's dreams. Further
proof of this is the final fleeting shot of a "long queue of hungry people,
waiting patiently for their turn" (to quote the original screenplay).
The second episode,
'Lunch', seems to take place one floor up. We are now in a restaurant, not of
the highest category, but sporting a tablecloth, clean plates and a small vase
of dried flowers. In addition, the two customers at the table are noticeably
more civilised than those in the first part, even if young Mr Dobrichovský is
somewhat scruffier than the elegant and blas¨¦ Mr Evzen, who happens to be
sharing his table. It is not long, however, before they are engaging in a
strange competition to eat objects. They eat everything - cutlery, the
tablecloth, clothes, the table, chairs -even their shoes, as in Chaplin's The
Gold Rush (1925). This last observation is especially relevant. This is not
so much a "perverse passion for eating" in itself, but the simple consequence of
gnawing hunger, caused not by being trapped in the snowy wastes as in Chaplin's
film, but by the lack of interest shown by the waiter, who proves impossible to
flag down as he scurries through the restaurant to the accompaniment of
Strauss's 'The Blue Danube'. The terrified Chaplin - who in the eyes of a
hunger-crazed Mack Swain has turned into a chicken - is saved from being eaten
only because a bear happens to be shot down nearby. However, the fate of Mr
Dobrichovský looks far less happy. We last see him being menacingly approached
by Mr Evzen, knife and fork in hand.
The discreet strains of a
tango set the tone for the final part of the film, 'Dinner'. We are in a
luxurious gourmet establishment, of the kind barely affordable for today's
Czech. There is a huge array of seasonings, dressings and sauce bottles, jars of
pickles and side dishes from which Mr Filip is garnishing what he has on his
plate - what this is, however, we are unable to see. He does this with the care
of a gourmet, but his seasoning is suspiciously plentiful, and the slow but
regular rhythm of the ritual makes us increasingly impatient to find out its
meaning. It is a drawn-out process, of the kind used in Hitchcock films to
prepare us for a final surprising or terrifying outcome. It is only when we
notice, lying next to the plate, a rough-hewn artificial wooden hand to which Mr
Filip nails his fork, that we begin to suspect what awaits us; on the plate lies
Mr Filip's own left hand, which he begins to cut up. There follows "a series of
brutal and spasmodic shots, which in the cannibalistic finale of Food
allow cutting to be avoided just where it would be most in order - on the plates
of bourgeois cannibals, who are about to devour marinated parts of their own
bodies." (Stefan Grissemann)
Here the film ends and the
smiles stiffen on our lips. For me, and clearly for the rest of the audience,
this ironic film was perhaps Svankmajer's cruellest yet. Its end is more
shocking than the excesses of a Viennese "action painting", and affects us more
deeply than all the rivers of blood, violence and atrocity which come rolling
off our cinema and television screens daily. This could well be because
Svankmajer's film is not a coldly calculated spectacle, but a projection of his
innermost ideas, which both make him laugh and terrify him. As we urgently
search for the hidden meaning of it all, we ask if it is supposed to mean that
if we allow ourselves to be treated like cattle, that is what we become. That if
we decide poverty turns people into wolves, we start behaving accordingly. And
that by living the way we do, we are already destroying ourselves involuntarily
- eating ourselves. Let us not expect Svankmajer to answer - he is asking
himself the same questions and looking for an answer with us. Or perhaps he only
awakens in us the need for such a search. Underneath the laughter and the irony,
he is pressing on us the statement of B¨¹chner's Woyzeck: "Everyone's an
abyss. You get dizzy if you look down."
[Ludv¨ªk Sv¨¢b: Jan Svankmajer's
Viennese menu (extract)]
From Illuminations
<
BACK