Fairy
tales are excellent subjects for good movies, as the Czech
film Little Otik (Otesánek)
easily demonstrates. Actually, the film is a tale within a
tale, taking place in contemporary Prague to show in part
how humans persist in repeating the same mistakes, generation
after generation. Mrs. Bozena Horak (played by Veronika Zilková)
wants a child, but both she and her husband Karel Horak (played
by Jan Hartl) are infertile. One day he digs up a tree-stump
that resembles a small child, so he performs woodworking cosmetics
and presents the object to Bozena. His wife then decides to
care for the object as if it were their child, so she feigns
pregnancy and birth, calls the tree-stump Otik, brings it
home to a crib, parades around town with Otik in a perambulator,
but never allows anyone to see her new baby boy. However,
Otik comes alive and is a very hungry baby. At first Bozena
breastfeeds Otik, but its appetite increases exponentially,
even eating the family cat. Rather than assessing the long-range
consequences of a voracious tree-stump, Bozena insists on
coddling the monster, and Karel goes along. In due course,
Otik eats a letter carrier and a visiting social worker, whereupon
Karel decides to lock up Otik within a strongbox in the basement
of his apartment. A neighbor girl, Alzbetka (played by Kristina
Adamcová), just happens to have a copy of the fairy
tale, so she realizes that the Horak’s Otik is the embodiment
of the Otik in the fairy tale. When Otik is locked up, she
becomes its keeper. Soon, she arranges for Otik to eat an
elderly apartment resident as well as the Horaks, and the
tale ends with further mysteries for those leaving the film
to ponder. Aside from the obvious parallels with the film
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
(2001), the symbolism of the original story is associated
with Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz,
as the overture blares out at dramatic moments. (The opera
features a dark mysterious forest, lusty hunters, evil, and
magic.) Certainly, the failure of the socialist experiment
is unmistakably analogized, as well as any effort at social
engineering by political leaders. In press notes, director
Jan Svankmajer sees the fairy tale as a variant on the Faust
legend, but he also believes that efforts of scientists to
map the human genome may produce a rebellion against the natural
order that will ultimately haunt the human race, a view held
by Europeans who oppose genetically altered foods. In a Czech
Republic created from the Velvet Revolution of Vaclav Havel,
Little Otik clearly says that humans should
not cop out on their responsibilities to others or sweep misconduct
under the rug but should instead look beyond the immediate
present to the long-range consequences of their behavior to
their societies. Even more broadly, Little Otik’s
repeated camera focus on food and mouths tells us that humans
have strong addictions (such as alcoholism, which is highlighted
in the film as an escape from responsibility), and our emancipation
can only occur when we come to our senses by stopping our
bad habits. No more graphic illustration of the Freudian concept
of the oral personality has ever been filmed. MH
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