Little Otik

Little Otik – 2000, Jan Svankmajer

Known as Otesanek in the Czech Republic (and given the incredibly lame title ‘Greedy Guts’ in some territories), this creepy little film is based on some Eastern European fairytale about a childless couple who, in their desperation to have a baby, raise a tree stump.



It’s not as dynamic as that trailer makes it look, but it’s certainly disturbing (the version I saw on FilmFour had no English dialogue, I assume it was just put on the trailer). An infertile couple are having a miserable time coming to terms with the fact that they will never have children. In an attempt to raise his wife’s spirits the husband presents her with a ‘baby’ fashioned from a tree stump he dug up from the garden of a cabin where they spend their weekends. The wife immediately starts treating the stump like it’s a real child and wraps it up in a blanket to take it home with them. Thus begins the downward spiral of a woman’s passion for motherhood. The wife tells the neighbours she is pregnant and the husband resigns to taking her to the cabin on weekends to see ‘the baby’, until one day, a mothers love (and obsession) brings the stump to life.

Baby Otik is animated by stop motion and puppetry. It’s creepy but it never gets as scary as it threatens to, it’s certainly not gruesome. The part of the film before the stump comes to life is probably the best. The husband’s despair at his wife’s delusion is affecting because it’s so believable. A genuine horror that his wife has gone mad and loves a stump like it’s her own child (what will the neighbours think?). The fantasy elements become more humorous than horrific as the film progresses. The animated sequences and creature effects (such as they are) have clearly been achieved on a budget, but it’s all been very lovingly made, which makes the anticlimactic ending all the more disappointing.

Considering the film was made in the Czech Republic a few years after the break up of Czechoslovakia, there are a couple of interesting subtleties; there is a lot of food in this film. It’s easy to associate Eastern Europe with queues outside shops where food is in short supply. Come to think of it, the use of food in Little Otik isn’t really very subtle at all; probably a comment on the other base human compulsion after reproduction – feeding. Otik’s a hungry baby, so hungry in fact that nothing and no one edible is safe.

I know there’s a lot more to the history of the former soviet block than rationing, but the shortage of food seems to have had an effect on the psyche of these film makers; there’s a lot of goulash in Lille Otik. Also, when Little Otik’s appetite extends to include a craving for human flesh and people start disappearing, there is a moment where they might be making a comment on the bad old days. I don’t know how bad Czechoslovakia was as far as other post war Soviet states, but there were at least a few purges apparently.

On the whole it’s a good one, but don’t watch it if you’re pregnant.