This Unnameable Little Broom (1985)

The opening credits cite this short as a strongly disguised adaptation of the ancient literary classic "The Epic of Gilgamesh", and the key word here is disguised. This film mainly peaked my interest not only because it was directed by the Brothers Quay, (and, having been a massive fan of Jan Svankmajer for a few years) whose work has interested me for quite some time now, but also because of my love for that ancient masterpiece. Readers of all ages: READ THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! It's thin as Hell, and is an action packed adventure epic layered with tragedy and philosophy. It's the earliest known work of literature, and yet its characters are well developed and fascinating.However, this is barely an adaptation of the classic. Instead, some of the events and characters merely (and mildly) symbolize those shown in the original boo. Instead of Gilgamesh, viewers will be exposed mostly to the eccentric creativity of the Brothers Quay, who fill the cinematic canvas with their unique and often unnerving animations. Sometimes mildly amusing, and other times quite unsettling, this brief short encapsulates the overall mood the Brothers Quay have mastered over the year quite well. The soundtrack is great, fitting the bizarre and enigmatic atmosphere extremely well, and the stop motion animation, as it is always with the work of masters like the Brothers Quay, is creepy, beautiful, and simply top notch!

This was originally meant to be a 52-minute film based on the Epic of Gilgamesh to involve live action, dance and animation. What we have now is a 11-minute film of the segment where Gilgamesh, setting up his traps, succeeds in trapping Enkidu with an elaborate table trap.I think it's almost a given that if one knows the Quays one is also acquainted with Švankmajer. It may be my too strong inclination to project my own subjective theories onto things, but I think his influence looms over this one strongly. While a very interesting film (I don't think the brothers have ever done anything uninteresting), I think the more their films started to swerve to their unknown paths of (often) black-and-white chaos the better.Not that this doesn't have that trademark sense of not only the surreal, nightmarish kind of dreaming, it already has that strong personal sense that makes one wonder whether these images have been taken from one's own subconscious. In their strangeness they are peculiarly familiar, and isn't that a sign of great art if anything? That we take the images as our own.This is available on DVD, a collection of their short films, and the brothers did a few audio commentaries for it, this being one of them. They are, personally, as endearing, interesting, intelligent and witty as artists get. And artists they are, and I'm so glad to have them around.

This movie left me baffled; and although I don't care for everything to make sense, I just couldn't find an angle from which to start understanding what's going on.There are two puppets, a monstrous hybrid of man and bicycle, and a winger creature. This one flies down, is wrapped in cloth and the bicycle-man clips its wings. Where can anyone go from here? I like symbolism, allegory, allusion, intertextuality. But this movie just gazes into itself and offers nothing.This movie has a stream of surreal, gripping imagery from start to finish, and I can't deny it's a technically impressive movie. The Quay brothers have a gift for the bizarre and the terrifying. They're darker and more hopeless than their master, Jan Svankmaker. I just wish their shorts had the same playfulness and logic of his movies.

The Brothers Quay seem, to me, to be of an elite type of film-making that tend to exploit the visual aspects rather than the sound or the narrative aspects of film-making. This is a key proof of that, wherein one can still find something of a narration but all told the movie seems to be an almost deja vu or ineffable series of movements and events.It's easy to call stuff like this "dreamlike", which I guess it is, but it seems cheap to just stop there. One of the key aspects about this particular short is that it has two characters that are both, in a reserved and quiet way, terrifying. One who has grown up on a diet of protagonist/antagonist will probably try desperately to relate to one character's fight against the other, but if you take a moment to think about it, what really is going on here, and who is doing what? There seems to be something of a fetishism here, some approach to sexualized objects. Without any real basis in reality, all fantasy and imagery, we can just take it as it is, which is a lot. The Brothers Quay have started to have defining control over their tools and I have a lot of faith in seeing the rest of their works as I delve further into this collection.--PolarisDiB