Really Surprised!

Absolutely amazing

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

it is really beautiful. fragile, cold and courageous. because it is little more than art film. or adaptation. it may be a dream fresco, a puzzle or a form of poem. it is special meeting with a delicate meeting front with profound world in which Expresionism art, Kafka lines, Surrealism and Oniric circles are frontiers of this work. crumbs of magic, dark questions confuse desires, memories from past for East European people and shadows of characters. and flavor of many nuances of acting. paper ash colors, gray feelings and strange forms of life. a parable about basic values and hole of emotions. version for a Gloomy Sunday and exploration of a trip without end.

Unfortunately I was not able to watch this film through to the end. It is slow and after about 20 minutes I felt I had seen it all. This is a pity as the black and white imagery that unfolded before my eyes was breathtakingly beautiful. But somehow I expect a movie to tell me a story, to get me involved in the character's lives in some way or other. In this aspect the movie really does fail miserably. It's just a big freak show. Too much style, hardly any substance.The movie is based on a novel by Swiss writer Robert Walser. It was first published around 1910 and reads like excerpts of the author's diary. In their diaries people explore their selves and their relationship with the external world. I think the main problem with Instituten Benjamenta is its failure to distinguish between the external and the internal world – it's just one big stage with a kind of a waiting room atmosphere. That's very fashionable in Modern European Theatre of our days. It can also be very, very, boring. A much better introduction into Walser's world is Thomas Koerfer's movie Der Gehülfe.No doubt the Brothers Quay are talented artists. Their movies live through the imagery, not from the narrative. This is ideal for music videos but maybe less so for a full length feature film.

I would give a 7.5 to the movie, it really earned 3/4 of a perfect movie but many would not pay interest in this movie and people should. A bunch of interesting scenes really worth some interest even if some points are averaging the quality of the whole movie. Artistically, this movie is a cake. The lighting has become a reference for me as underexpose movie, such as Werckmeister Harmonies. I also would make cross references to this movie for the minimal use of speech and the intensity of the musical score, with a good presence, wisely use.Some animation scenes contains a lot of inner emotion such as the one with the bullet path. Actress Alice Krige is troubling in his role, bringing all the strengh and the intensity in the movie, bringing the movie to a straighter line than all the dreamy but unfocused storyline ; so goes the bad side of the movie. It is easy to excuse a movie that is about dramatize to be unclear, but the spectators can't see clues or signs about what the authors really wanted to say in here. Even if life is hard to understand, can it be an excuse to make things that don't have to have a point? It finally is a highly sensitive movie in which ends up with no storyline, just pictured emotions. But it was enough to make me enjoy the movie, and i hope people will see that this part worth the movie.

Watching this film was a treat. Slow at times, but so stunningly poetic all the time, and once in a while, really intense. As if Kafka and Bergman had just watched "Eraserhead" and decided to do something together. Sort of.