Analysis of 'Little Otik' -Otesanek-

"Little Otik" is a 2000 film directed by Jan Svankmajer. Its story begins with a man and his wife in a doctor's office, where we quickly infer that the couple is infertile. The wife, Bozena, is inconsolable; her husband, Karel, buys her a cat in an attempt to ease her pain, but still she weeps. At the suggestion of a neighbor, Karel and Bozena move into a house in the countryside, in hopes that the placidity will ease Bozena's suffering. It is here that Karel, while uprooting a tree, discovers a root with a vaguely mouth-shaped knot that inspires him to crudely, half jokingly, carve the root into the effigy of a baby. As he shows it to his wife, it is quickly revealed that Bozena has taken the doll much more seriously than Karel. She quickly becomes obsessed with raising it as a real child, even going so far as to fake a pregnancy to alleviate the suspicion of her neighbors regarding her newfound baby. But, much to the Karel's surprise, at the end of Bozena's fake pregnancy, the wooden effigy comes to life, and the couple decides to name it Otik. Otik begins consuming everything in sight; first dozens of bottles and packs of baby food, then the cat. Ultimately, Otik begins eating people, and the couple decides to lock Otik in the basement of their apartment building. Meanwhile, a child in the apartment building, Alzbetka, has taken an interest in the child since being the first to discover its true nature and recognizing its similarity to the Czech folktale "Otesanek". She begins taking care of Otik in the basement and bringing it food, but she quickly runs out of resources. Eventually, she starts intentionally bringing Otik people to eat, until Otik finally devours several apartment residents, and even Karel and Bozena.

It is important to note that although the main facet of the story is based on "Otesanek", the film isn't simply a retelling of the fairytale. Rather, the characters in the story are fully aware both of the fairytale's existence and the fact that their current situation is identical to it (Karel sometimes harshly refers to Otik as "Otesanek", and Alzbetka reads the story out of her fairy tale book throughout the movie, establishing the story to the audience as something that already exists even within the frame of the movie). So, the frame of this movie places the fairytale in a modern setting and uses it as an analogy to a modern phenomenon. The film's very general theme could be stated as "the raising of children"; that is, it examines a child's perception in the way it is brought up and how its existence affects the lives around it, as well as the forming of irrational familial bonds and the media's role in the development of a child.

The beginning of the film's analogy is in the creation of the child. Notably, Otik is born of something completely natural only when crudely fashioned by human hands. This is analogous to the way that modern humans take very natural things and sort of bastardize them; although the film's example is referring to the development of a child in this context, another good example would be the formation of a modern home. That is, humans have taken something absolutely natural, the primitive need for shelter against nature, and built a culture around it, building up excessively lavish homes that are furnished in every square. There is no purpose for this (in the primal, evolutionary sense of the word), yet owning a good home is something first world societies have deemed strictly necessary. The same is true for the owning of land, which has its roots in a territorial instinct but has grown into something completely different. That said, Karel and Bozena do the same sort of thing with the raising of a child. When they are unable to have a child of their own, they fashion one for themselves. Not because they really want a child, but because they want to experience the process of raising one, sort of just because that's what people do.

Another facet of the analogy is the media saturation that bombards a modern child. In the very first scene, Karel looks out a window and sees a baby in the street below being wrapped in a newspaper. This serves a dual purpose: one of showing the viewer that Karel has babies on the mind, and the other of demonstrating that modern children are, from the very earliest stages of life, influenced by the media. Similarly, Alzbetka is reading books throughout the entire film, and what she talks about and is concerned with is always based on what she is reading. For example, when she has some sort of women's health book in the beginning, she only thinks about pregnancy, sex, and childbirth, whereas later in the movie she becomes obsessed with the Otesanek story. Alzbetka's father is another example of a media saturated individual, as he is frequently seen sitting and staring at a television which seems to exclusively play advertisements (all of which obviously affect him, as he owns all the advertised products). This concept isn't applied directly to Otik in the film as much as is the greater idea of consumption; his insatiable appetite is likened to the unending way in which we consume our environment, which is frequently manifested in the media. It's important to look at who exactly Otik eats. In the middle of the film, when Otik is still living with Karel and Bozena, the people Otik eats are the government workers, thereby indicating that the first things to be absorbed are the rules and regulations of society.

This can also be taken as a criticism of the structures of modern society. Jan Svankmajer seems to be saying that that which is not natural as destructive to human society. I liken this to the criticisms of society made by John Zerzan, who advocates the destruction of all government, domestication, agriculture, language, and symbolic thought. In his essay "Future Primitive", Zerzan states:

"A nearly complete reversal in anthropological orthodoxy has come about, with important implications. Now we can see that life before domestication/agriculture was in fact largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality, and health. This was our human nature, for a couple of million years, prior to enslavement by priests, kings, and bosses."

This reasoning can be seen at the core of the movie's tale: a couple with confused intentions takes nature and crudely fashions it into their idea of a "human", showering it with all the social influences and everything they believe goes along with humanity. But it isn't human, and all the things they've fed it have been destructive to it, to them, and to everyone else around it.

Stepping back from the analogy of the narrative, the aesthetic elements of the film serve a more mechanical role in developing the story. Svankmajer typically uses some of the more bizarre shots of the film to put us in the position of a particular character and explain their thought process without using dialogue. For example, when Karel first discovers the root that becomes Otik, he holds it up, and then there is a cut to him in the same position holding a baby, from his perspective. This demonstrates quite effectively that he sees some baby-like quality in it, even though it doesn't really look like a baby at all. Similarly, when Alzbetka is playing on the apartment staircase, Mr. Zlabek walks up, puts his glasses on, and then there's a stop motion sequence depicting his pants unbuttoning and an arm reaching out. This shows, without any visible change of emotion on Alzbetka's face, that she knows Mr. Zlabek wants her. More subtly, Svankmajer often uses a zoom-in close up to indicate the importance of something to a character. For example, in one scene Alzbetka is talking to her mother about the possibility of carrying a pregnancy partially outside of one's body. Alzbetka's mother says "it's certainly not possible… at least not that I've heard of". On the words "at least not that I've heard of", the camera zooms into a close up of her face. This shot highlights those words as the ones that stuck in Alzbetka's head, and in fact this part of the movie is the beginning of Alzbetka's suspicion of Karel and Bozena. I feel this is actually a very effective way of conveying a character's thoughts, as opposed to the typical way of trying to express them with dialogue, or words in general in the case of literature. This is closer to the way thoughts actually appear, more as a fleeting concept than a concrete sentence. Similarly, Svankmajer's stop motion sequences seem to do a good job of immersing us in a fantastical environment, as his brand of stop motion (with a fairly low frame rate) looks notably similar to the visuals experienced while dreaming. In just one instance of the film is the aesthetic used as a symbol in itself: that of the TV commercials. Each of the commercials involves someone repeatedly saying the product name in a low, drawn out voice. Based on the reactions that Alzbetka's dad has to the commercials, they are being overtly likened to hypnosis. So, the function of the form the TV commercials take is to symbolize hypnosis from the media.

So, ultimately, in a few words this film is a criticism of our overly complex society. Although similar in its criticisms to the work of John Zerzan, I don't think the film goes quite so far as to advocate the complete overthrowing of all abstract thought, however the questions it inspires lead to a similar line of reasoning.