The Surrealistic movement that developed after World War 1 in Europe was an artistic response to the extreme harshness of the real world. The movement used precise depictions of objects and forms to relate to a subconscious idea or thought. When used in cinema, the same idea of surrealistic art would be used to interpret the human psyche and complex dreams. The surrealistic cinema has its roots way back in the silent era, but had a renaissance in the Post War European artistic movements in the 1960’s.
Czechoslovakia, while trying to break free of the communist yolk in the mid 60’s, was experimenting with political and artistic freedom in what is known today as the Czech New Wave. One of the movements premier talents was the surrealist Vera Chytilova whose film, “Daisies”, gave us two young women who decide at the films beginning to go bad. In the literal sense, this going bad, involved dating old lechers for the purpose of getting a free fancy meal, halfhearted attempts at suicide, discarding love and other people’s emotions as a game and even destruction of consumerism, which is mostly represented in the film as food.
Food becomes a very important part of the structure in the movie. At the beginning of the movie one of the two girls, who are named Marie I and Marie II, eats a fruit from what appears to be the tree of knowledge of good and evil, whereby they are both transported to their apartment whilst making their decision on being bad.
From there they go on dates with men at least twice their age, using the men to get a free meal at a fancy restaurant before dumping each one on a train leaving town. They also disrupt a strange nightclub, slice, cut and castrate phallus looking food while ending their adventure at an empty banquet hall loaded with gaudy food. Their obscene gorging of this food and the wonton destruction of the hall is one of the so called highlights of the film.
None of the character’s actions have any linear progress, as instead, I was treated to a series of events without any understandable connection between them. This is a surrealistic movie, so the actual constraints of a plot are not required.
The movie gives a sense of female empowerment to the young ladies doing whatever they want. Their actions veer with extreme sharpness from one extreme to the next and while some scenes made me chuckle, most made me want to close my eyes. That is not a very good response for a motion picture.
By beginning and ending her movie with a short war footage, Chytilova appears to be telling us that the world and society does not deserve well behaved actions from its youth. Instead I was shown two spoiled uninteresting brats who symbolically interpret sexual oppression and civilized self-destruction. While not boring, “Daisies”, is not a movie I particularly want to see more then once.
1001 Movies before you die 