剧情简介
1985英国动画短片《这种难以名状的小扫帚》由狄莫瑞·奎导演,影片讲述的是:
Boasting the longest title in the Quays entire output this 1985 film is generally known as This Unnameable Little Broom though the Quays themselves refer to it as Gilgamesh It began life as a proposed hourlong Channel Four programme exploring aspects of the ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh the oldest known surviving work of literature which would combine puppet animation dance sequences courtesy of choreographer Kim Brandstrup and liveaction documentary elements However Channel Four were dubious about the project and only agreed to fund a short animated sequence as a pilot which is all that was ultimately made
But even when divorced from the original planned context This Unnameable Little Broom stands up very well on its own as a short parable of cruelty and oppression The Gilgamesh character is portrayed as a childlike figure seemingly welded permanently to a tricycle with a grotesquely swollen head that Picassolike simultaneously presents both a profile and a frontal view His kingdom is a boxlike construction seemingly suspended in midair with a distant forest just out of reach
At the start of the film Gilgamesh sets various elaborate snares to lure Enkidu the forest creature into his domain These range from conventional boobytraps to altogether more unsettling creations notably the desk drawer containing what appears to be a detached pulsing vagina the Quays typically oblique reference to the point in the original legend where Gilgamesh sends a prostitute to seduce Enkidu Enkidu himself is a birdlike creature partly made up of genuine animal skeletons whose wideeyed guilelessness proves his downfall
The film had numerous inspirations besides the Gilgamesh legend The frenzied viciousness that pervades the film was a tribute to Austrian writer Konrad Bayer the design of Gilgamesh was sourced from artwork by HeinrichAnton Müller one of a trio of outsider artists the others being Friedrich SchröderSonnenstern and Adolf Wölfli that the Quays originally intended to dedicate their film to but shyness prevented them
However they werent too shy to include a backhanded swipe in the title Hunar Louse is a satirical representation of Lunar House in Croydon the headquarters of the Home Offices Immigration and Nationality Directorate which called the Quays visa status into question at the time they were making the film Though this was alarming at the time the experience helped fuel the paranoid Kafkaesque atmosphere that pervades their film