The Brothers Quay are twin American filmmakers who currently reside in England. According to wikipedia they typically work with dolls that are in some form of degeneration and their work is often dark and brooding. When I first started watching Street of Crocodiles, I wasn't really sure what to expect. Sure the visuals were stunning, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to get out of it. The opening sequence especially threw me for a loop. My guess is that it was to kind of set the story up as a fairy tale and romanticize the real problems that were being discussed. With that said...
I deduced that there was a deep longing coming from the doll characters for the life that was evident in the main character. He was alive and his motions were fluid where their motions were jerky and they were empty. They wanted the life that a man could bear, they tried creating their own kind (the light bulb man) but it merely fizzled out. There was a scene in particular where all the doll characters were caressing objects that visually simulated sexual organs (the meat, the cloth with hair, the glove) that they wished they possessed but simply did not. At the very end the simply begin to fall apart as everything becomes unscrewed, including their arms which began to jerk mechanically around.
It was interesting to see that what I'd thought was more or less correct when the narration came on in the end as there was no dialogue at all. The mis en scene was absolutely stunning and entirely encompassing. The symbolism was also very strong and I think that's something I really need to work on. I need to find out what all of my materials mean to me and what their function is within my work. I think that will help strengthen my images, but I am a little worried about going over board because I don't want something strange happening in every image. I do want a sense of normalcy to be apparent in some but... I guess we'll see how that works out!
Film Stills courtesy of Google Images
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