Down
to the Cellar is a short film from Czech filmmaker Jan
Svankmajer that I’ve grown fond of. I remember feeling a little
underwhelmed when I first watched it, but it stayed with me, for some reason,
and now it’s one of my favorite short films (I wonder if there’s a name for
that kind of art). It was the same with Svankmajer’s
Alice (Neco Z Alenky), a creepy vision of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in
Wonderland complete with Svankmajer’s
disturbing but fascinating characteristics. For me, the last quarter of Alice
became a battle to stay awake. I thought Alice
just wasn’t the film for me, but that couldn’t have been more untrue. Alice ended up planting itself in my
mind before slowly taking its hold on me, and, as if a bug had just
bit me, I spontaneously ordered off for the DVD and, on a whim, read for the
first time Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland and Through the Looking
Glass. As those of you that follow my At
the Mansion of Madness fan page on Facebook might have noticed, I have endeavored
to watch as many AIW movies as I can
slowly but surely come across. This is all primarily thanks to Jan Svankmajer’s vision of AIW. Not bad for a movie that I
struggled to stay awake during on first viewing.
