Historia Naturae (suita) (1967)

Such a frustrating disappointment

How sad is this?

Great Film overall

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Here is a story of domination and consumption. We begin seeing the shellfish, ultimately consumed as food. As the vignettes progress, we see aesthetic consumptive domination, voyeuristic consumptive domination, the consumptive domination of scientific examination, the consumptive domination of pet ownership, the consumptive domination of manipulated breeding, the consumptive domination of generating a historical narrative of the other species, and finally the human itself objectified (made object of scientific scrutiny, medicalized). We see in this final image that humanity has- after its domination of 'nature'- consumed itself. Consumerism ends as the consumer devours itself. There is a ninth vignette- we consume this image. It continues with us-

I have seen most of Czech master stop-motion filmmaker Jan Svankmajer's films...."Historia Naturae, Suita" was among the last. I am very glad it wasn't among the very first, otherwise I might never have grown to love Svankmajer's films and given up earlier. It's not a terrible film but the filmmaker simply hadn't mastered his craft and his earliest films are mostly very dry and easy to dismiss. In this one, he goes through the various orders of animals (fish, reptiles, etc.) and does a very fast-paced job of splicing film together of various representations--some of which are stuffed, are skeletons, are alive or are drawings. As it's a 'suite', there's music to accompany all this and I found the music, at times, a bit too frenetic. Not an enjoyable film for me.

this animated short is consists of 8 brief segments,each dealing with a different species,each set with its own style of music.each segment has animated shapes that corresponding to the the specific species.these shapes evolve and change within themselves,creating different patterns.at the end of each segment,we see a man eating a piece of food.like the previous reviewer,I'm not sure what that part's about.anyway,visually, i thought this piece was pretty interesting.it's very colourful,and the transitions from one pattern into another were done well.the actual point of the piece,I'm not exactly sure of.but maybe there isn't one.i probably didn't do a very good job of describing what the film was about.it's pretty late in the morning here and i'm half asleep.i do know that it didn't quite do it for me.i give Historia Naturae, Suita a 5/10

I wouldn't include this among Svankmajer's better shorts, but it does still represent his crafty ability to animate to music. Form and design seem the primary concern of a movie that goes into and out of and around and under various living organisms, often amazingly matching color to tone and shape to rhythm very well.I don't know about the cutaways to the man eating. One thing I have noticed about Svankmajer is that he seems rather obsessed with people's mouths--it recurs in many of his films. In a way, I suppose the eating could be just general abstraction in that laughing surrealist way. Otherwise I think it might be a comment on our consumption of the natural world. Either way, I don't actually care for it very much. I like the music and the animation a lot more.--PolarisDiB