Institutionalized

>> The eerie, irrational world of the Quay Brothers

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

It all began with the word "Kafkaesque," heard in connection with an exhibition of Polish posters. That enigmatic word, for the then-young Quay twins Stephen and Timothy of Philadelphia, was the key to a strange, quasi-European world of eerie, unclear malaise. A quarter century later, that spirit now resides in the films the two create--first stop-motion strangeness reminiscent of Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, later fusions of live action and animation comparable in feel to the works of Guy Maddin or early David Lynch. These days, the twins live in London, tag-teaming interviews so fluidly that one can only glue their thoughts together, attributing them to a single entity.



Mirror: Let's talk about your latest short film In Absentia, which is dedicated to E.H., "who wrote to her husband from an asylum." It's fascinating and frightening, and even enlightening, to peer into the minds of those who no longer see things the way normal people do.

Quay Brothers: I think it's even more harrowing because of the nature of Karlheinz Stockhausen's music. I don't think any normal music could achieve those heights--it's almost an anguished scream throughout. It really puts it on edge. Although Stockhausen said, when we met him in Cologne, that he hadn't conceived of one single image when he made this music.

M: I know that you guys frequently draw inspiration from music--it's been said that music is that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible. So trying to translate to another medium that inexpressible thing must be a terrible challenge.

QB: It is, but it's one you'd like to use to force your own language or to move toward those regions. It's also in the same context that we always feel that film should obey musical laws rather than dramaturgical laws, which also permits that area of, you might say, fluctuating narrative.

M: Is that a general policy with you guys?

QB: It's a handicap, but we love it (laughs). We always prefer to be put in a corner rather than an open plain. We know we can always get smaller, we can explode the smallness. In a way, In Absentia does try to underscore that by retreating into that graphite realm, tinier and tinier, closer and closer on things.

Funky monkeys and bugs on ice

M: Let's move to Institute Benjimenta, your full-length feature. Two questions here, the obvious one being about the transition from stop-motion puppets to live actors. What challenges did that present, when you no longer had complete control over every detail of the characters' movements?

QB: In one sense, we must have clearly prepared ourselves for something like that. Normally, we know precisely what every puppet is doing, so there's a certain trajectory. This opened up other trajectories, even more sublime by the nature of what an actor can offer. Yet we wanted to maintain something of the masked character of the puppet world, but never once feeling that they're just automatons being pushed around like a croupier would in a game. In a way, we approached it a bit like a silent film, in which you have to be very conscious of the way an actor moves and expresses him- or herself.

M: The other question involves the inclusion of a capuchin monkey in the proceedings--a necessary element for any film to achieve true greatness. I would imagine it was your most difficult actor.

QB: It was--in fact, it was hopeless. It cost as much as an actor. We were very disappointed. We had to cut him out of a lot of scenes. Yes, I think we had higher hopes.

M: Now, something that occurred to me is that your films would be best viewed with the seating arranged at a 30-degree angle, so that they're seen in dreamlike peripheral vision, not directly. What do you make of that?

QB: Fine by us (laughs)! We'll make that a recommendation. Or in a rear-view mirror--you only see a portion of a landscape, but it's very dynamic for some reason. It's also always vanishing.

M: Final question--what are you working on now?

QB: You don't want to know.

M: Yes, I do!

QB: It's something for Fox Sports. We're doing ice hockey for insects. They loved the idea, but they've basically hijacked the whole commercial out of our hands. It's our all-time low. They're real shits, so we're just going to give them raw material and let them play with it.

M: Anything brighter on the horizon?

QB: We did a nice little extract for this film Frida, by Julie Taymor, about Frida Kahlo. She asked us to do a hallucination scene after Frida has the accident, and she pretty much gave us carte blanche. We haven't seen what she's used yet--people always alter things, but we've been told that she pretty much used everything we gave her.

Three separate collections of Quay films screen at the Cinématheque Québécoise on Saturday, Sunday and Thursday, Oct. 20, 21 and 25, 6:30pm, $5. See Listings for details