Excellent adaptation.

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Admirable film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Another slice of demented surrealism from the Czech king of stop motion, Jan Svankmajer. This one's not up there with CONSPIRATORS OF PLEASURE, my favourite of the director's work so far, but it contains plenty of material of interest for fans of the unique and downright bizarre.The general emphasis of the narrative is to explore the writings of the Marquis de Sade and his ilk, by exploring the treatment of the insane who are locked up in mental institutes. This typically turns out to be a study of crazy people: the inmates have literally taken over the asylum in this case, so there's lots of bizarre behaviour, blasphemy, S&M, and plenty of the outlandish sequences that anyone exposed to the director's output will expect.LUNACY is no favourite of mine, as it feels that the premise is a little dragged out and repetitive, particularly in the first half of the production. It certainly picks up for the second half, but the viewer must put up with some terrible overacting and a general lack of resolution in order to enjoy the film fully. I admit I found it all a little histrionic and difficult to sit through, although my favourite moments were the inserts featuring the stop motion 'living' meat, the bizarre highlight of an incredibly quirky film.

"Lunacy" is Jan Svankmajer's homage to Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis De Sade, (it's full of allusions to "Marat/Sade"), and as he tells us himself, is a horror film and not a work of art. It is certainly the first and I would argue it is also a work of art of quite a high order. It combines live-action with Svankmajer's trade-mark animation in giving us a study of what we might call 'the banality of evil' unlike almost anything else in cinema. It is a film that moves from a barely recognizable present to some kind of past as easily as it does from live-action to animation existing in a kind of no-man's-land between the real and surreal in a manner almost guaranteed to give you the very literal creeps; this is the real thing. Yet there is also something tongue-in-cheek about the horrors Svankmajer inflicts on us. There is a giddy perversity to the picture that to a degree dissipates the director's attack on the institutions he appears to condemn. This is as much a very bizarre celebration of hedonism as it is an attack on the communist regime. There's also an asylum in the film that makes the one at Charenton look like a Wendy House. Perverse, yes but also utterly extraordinary and undoubtedly one of Svankmajer's masterpieces.

This film is about the sadistic adventures of Marquis de Sade, and also the lunacy of two extreme ways of running a psychiatric asylum.I have seen Jan Svankmajer's films before, so I knew that this film would be bizarre and disturbing. Still, this film gravely shocked me. From the moving tongues to enucleation, this film was full of revolting and gory scenes. I almost felt sick during the film. I was also surprised to see a blasphemous scene involving a statue of crucifixion, which was shocking especially considering that the Czech Republic is a religious country.Fortunately, the story was gripping and engaging. It really kept me longing for more to unfold. Marquis' monologue questioning the existence of God was well composed, and gave new arguments (for me anyway) to the never ending debate of His existence. This film is not for the uptight or the light hearted.

After knowing literally nothing about either this film or the director (who I've, since, become very interested in), I must say that this is a fantastic piece of art. Lunacy refuses to be what anyone expects of it: beginning with a B-horror feel, evolving into a very Salo-esquire shock inducing libertine tale, and ending in a profoundly *con*founding take on mental health. This is neither surreal, nor horror, nor pure art film, but a very effective combination of the three that is both accessible and challenging. From its seemingly flat stop motion animation which becomes increasingly effective, to its difficult narrative, this is a shocking movie that transcends the simple desire to shock the viewer and leaves one feeling effected (not affected).