Everybody invested to a certain degree in cinema has their favourite actors and directors; the fascinating part of which is discovering who influenced them. This is doubly true when you discover the people who influenced such a staunch surrealist and outsider, Terry Gilliam, the very same influence that can also be found in Jan Svankmajer, Wes Anderson and Tim Burton’s filmographies. Second Run’s release of a Jester’s Tale directed by visionary Czech director Karel Zeman and co-written by Pavel Juracek (Ikarie XB-1 and Daisies). The influence of Karel Zeman goes deep and wide, you only realise how much when you see his movies in action.
A Jester’s Tale sees a ploughman press-ganged into service during the 30 year’s war. As a piece of narrative, The Jester’s Tale is a garden variety adventure war film with the same basic beats and structure. Naturally for a film that has gone on to influence some of the most respected names of the day, there is more to it than its surface.
Karel Zeman has composed what has since been dubbed a ‘pseudo-historical film’. Humour plays a large role with the film being narrated by a Jester who “knows all history”, thus there is both an obvious sense of humour permeating throughout and a much darker, satirical heartbeat. The surface comedy is never deeper than pratfalls and slapstick but on the flipside, Zeman and Juracek composed an anti-war satire which impressively manages to be cutting while never taking itself too seriously. Equally graceful and whimsical, this is a balance that would claim the careers of many high profiled directors. This is no easy feat that Zeman has fulled off .
Zeman destroys the lines between live-action and animation – an achievement that has barely been bettered in the 60 years since release.
A JESTER’S TALE
The incorporation of both live-action and animation saw Karel Zeman and A Jester’s Tale become such endearing components of the Czech New Wave. Animation which falls into two firmly opposing camps, the lesser used of the two is the prop and scale work. Animation in the literal sense of ‘animating the inanimate’, the sets bend, fall and twist with the whims of the director. A prime example is late on when one of the core characters believes (in his drunken state) that his hiccups are causing the castle to crumble around him, its a bizarre but constantly gratifying presentation of such an old-world style of cinema comedy.
The second is an issue of scale, in that is uses both traditional live-action film and pop-up art later popularized by Gilliam. Battle scenes, Gods and anything used to dictate scale is achieved with this style of anarchic and simple animation. It’s easy to see why this has been dubbed pseudo-history as both the director and co-writer are having such chaotic fun at its expense. This style is sometimes as small as an avatar for the god of war blowing down battlements and people in the heat of battle to outright battle sequences making glorious fun out of the leaders and power players’ found at the side-lines. While far from the gallery of grotesques this style would later be used for, Zeman destroys the lines between live-action and animation – an achievement that has barely been bettered in the 60 years since A Jester’s Tale’s release.
As generic a story as this is, the joy is all in the execution; with its wry sense of humour and a nonconformist ethic founded in invention and experimentation. The Czech new wave quite often a hyper-political movement and it was necessitated by the insecurities of the time but it’s in films like this and the co-writers impossibly hyper-frenetic Daisies that this movement of intellectuals and alchemists found their undeniably singular voice. Editing, form, time and place are all tools in this wonderfully eccentric icon. The Jester’s Tale is insane, another fantastically entertaining oddity from the adventurous heads at Second Run.
A JESTER’S TALE IS OUT NOW ON SECOND RUN DVD
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