Little Otik Analysis

Analyzing one of the opening scenes of the film “Little Otik”, directed by Jan Svankmajer. This scene begins with a black and white version of two mannequins in many different sex positions. Preceding that scene is a colored close up of a tree being sawed and chopped down. We see the wife of the man cutting the tree down looking out the window with a saddened face. As she glares at her husband cutting down the tree she comes inside to open a trunk that seems to have a lot of sentimental meaning to her. She opens the drunk and it’s filled with baby clothes. Although there is dialogue happening in the back its not the main focus in the scene. The women immediately shuts the trunk filled with baby clothes and locks it back in the armoire. We are then directed back to the husband pulling a stump of a tree out of the ground. As we see him struggle to pull the stump up from beneath the soil it finally gives lose. This stump symbolizes a sense of relief. The man holds the stump up and we hear a cry, a babies cry. We see hands covered in dirt with a baby being held up between the hands. The man takes the stump inside and begins to work on it. …show more content…
We see her take the trunk from the armoire and as she opens it we see baby clothes. Before she is even able to see everything in the trunk she closes it back up and puts it back in the armoire. It wasn’t the trunk that was the main focus of this scene; it was the actual setting they were in. She was alone, in a not well-lit room, with her black cat. The mood of this scene was set by the atmosphere around the actual character were focusing on. There was no dialogue in this and the woman was stirring coffee while staring at a wall. If it wasn’t the atmosphere and the physical actions of the woman we wouldn’t of known the severity of the sadness this woman was experiencing about her