Dancing meat at the film festival

I just saw 9 films in 3 days - 7 at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and two others (Stormbreaker and Little Miss Sunshine), so I was happy about that for a few minutes but now I'm depressed because I'm back in my mid-sized Canadian city that has shit for films. Some of the good titles I saw: The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, narrated by "philosopher and psychoanalyst" and Slovenian superstar Slavoj Zizek (lotta Lynch and Hitchcock), a boring Paraguayan one (I actually fell asleep, but that could also be attributed to the comfy theatre and being a little drunk), an ok Turkish one, a very sweet "boy genius" Swiss one, and Lunacy.
I couldn't decide what the hell to say about Lunacy, so I stole the writeup from the VIFF guide, which helps to describe it.

Lunacy (Sílení) - Czech Republic, Directed By: Jan Svankmajer

Who's free? Who's mad? And what does all that raw meat have to do with it? Jan Svankmajer's characteristic stop-motion animation, here taking the form of slithering tongues, severed animal limbs and lumps of raw meat, punctuates this “philosophical horror film” which offers a forceful argument for the primacy of the body and its senses over the mind and rationality. Loosely based on short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and inspired by the Marquis de Sade, it unfolds in a bizarre version of 18th century France. Our hero, Jean Berlot, is haunted by nightmares in which he is dragged to a madhouse. A licentious Marquis observes Jean's nocturnal misery and later invites him to his chateau. There Jean witnesses a blasphemous orgy and learns about aversion therapies. Hoping to conquer his own fears, Jean reluctantly accompanies the Marquis to a lunatic asylum where the patients rampage freely and the staff have been tarred, feathered and locked in the dungeon... Veteran actor Jan Triska, marvelous here, will attend the festival.“Svankmajer has spent 40 years developing a distinctive visual style, and it's front and center in Lunacy. His nihilistic story isn't for everyone but he skillfully manages its disturbing execution in ways no one else could, and he brings it across in a darkly comedic way that encourages simultaneous laughter, horror and thought. If that isn't art, what is?"--Tasha Robinson, The Onion.

Jan Svankmajer Filmography: The Last Trick (64), The Garden (68), The Castle of Otranto (73-79), Alice (87), Faust (94), Conspirators of Pleasure (96), Little Otik (00)

Let's just say that this movie makes Eyes Wide Shut seem conservative, Christians will stop complaining about The Da Vinci Code and focus their attention on this, and that I may have to be a vegetarian for the next little while because I will never look at raw meat the same way again. For those of you who won't see it (likely all of you), the best scene is the last one: after a movie of dancing raw meat and severed tongues, the shot is of a supermarket meat aisle, and zooms in to one lone steak in a plasticized package where the plastic is moving slowly in and out, as the meat tries to breathe. This was either the best or the worst film I have ever seen (I haven't decided which), but it certainly was the most memorable. This seems to be a pattern in Svankmajer's films - Faust with puppets, a tree stump with an appetite for blood in Little Otik - say what you want about him, but he certainly makes films that are hard to forget.