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"The naïve Jean Berlot is brought to an asylum taken over by the inmates in what Svankmajer describes as a “philosophical horror story”.

Lunacy has been heavily described as a cross between Edgar Allen Poe and the Marquis De Sade, which is true enough on a literal level, but doesn't give director Jan Svankmajer nearly enough credit. First and foremost, it's a Svankmajer film, recognizable from the moment a shirt starts crawling off a chair to open a bolted door of its own accord, while its owner begs it to stop. The stop-motion impresario behind films like Alice and Little Otik, Svankmajer has spent the past 40 years developing a distinctive visual style, and this is front and center in Lunacy, alongside Svankmajer's similarly familiar evocation of strangely playful dread. In short excerpts between scenes, animal tongues, eyes and brains cavort grotesquely, reminding viewers that all the human antics on screen amount to little more than dancing meat sparked of life, but destined to collapse and rot.

Czech Lions Awards - Best Art Director, Best Film Poster - 2006

Dir. Jan Svankmajer, 2005 Czech Republic, 118 mins, Cert 15, Illuminations