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Little Otik
Rating: 1 fist of feces
imdb
record
Reviewed May 26, 2002
Released 2000
Feed The Tree -
by Kim Stoilis
Little Otik (Otesánek) - Directed
by Jan Svankmajer
(Czech Republic/UK/Japan, 2000, 127 min., subtitled)
Jan Svankmejer's surreal Little Otik beautifully frightens with the commonplace parental emotions of longing and denial.
When Mr. and Mrs. Horak, a barren Czech couple, attempt to thwart nature with a replacement child of their own making, unchecked need leads to multiple deaths including their own.
Otik, at first a piece of wood with no real characteristics other than a hole that serves as eyes and mouth and a little nubbin of a penis, becomes larger and larger with each disallowed feast he makes of those around him. Using his noted style of live-action animation, Svankmejer has created the penultimate "children are scary" film, i.e. Rosemary's Baby, Eraserhead, and anything with that eerie child automaton Haley Joe Osment.
Little Otik (literally small stump) is birthed when his father unearths a tree trunk from the grounds of their country place. After some carving and shaping, Mr. Horak, presents the lumpen, be-twigged log to his wife. In seconds, she is powdering, bathing, and changing nappies on said twig. Pruning and varnishing comes later.
In an effort to convince her neighbors she has had a natural child, Mrs. Horak, slightly tetched initially, and totally whack less than a third into the movie, fakes it. She sews different sized pillows representing nine months normal belly growth and wears them for the duration, all except for month nine. Madam Horak grows impatient near month eight and decides she is going into labor early.
Home from the "hospital", Otik gets newborn treatment but begins to loose his place in the Horak's hearts when he eats the family cat. The hunger continues and the list of the missing grows longer.
Alzbetka, a neighbor's daughter, seems to be the only one aware of a fairy tale in which a similarly adopted twig becomes murderous. She anticipates the disappearances and protects and cares for the banished Otik after his parents lock him in the buildings cellar.
Another female bewitched by the promise of motherhood, young Alzbetka feeds and tends baby Otik. She offers him her toys and the other building tenants when she is locked out of her own family's refrigerator.
The folk tale of Otansek that Svankmejer references throughout the film ends with Otik being felled by an old woman after he ravages her cabbage patch. Little Alzbetka tries to protect Otik from a similar fate, but her warnings against cabbage and the tummy aches they bring are not enough to keep him out of the building's garden. A deadly hoe-wielding babushka is not far behind.
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