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Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995)

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19 comments in total

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15 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
A unique experience, a work of exceeding beauty, 27 January 1999

Author: August-4 from London, England

Institute Benjamenta is an oddity. Let me say that first, get it out of the way. Part of me hesitates from revealing here that it is one of my favourite films of all time because I know I'll make some people reading this mini-review approach it from the wrong angle. A film like this should never become required viewing. You should stumble across it at a repertory cinema somewhere or be beguiled by the video-box art showing the striking visage of Alice Krige as she paces before her blackboard, deerfoot staff in hand. You should find one evening that its the only thing that sounds interesting on TV, or peer at a still alongside a mention in your TV guide and wonder what on earth the picture is supposed to depict. Contained between main and end credits here is a world so visually ravishing and technically abstruse that you are only in the film while you are watching; the rules of the outside do not apply. You peer into the dreamy, foggy black-and-white and what you can't identify for certain your imagination fills out. These are the most special special effects because you wonder 'what' and 'why' by never 'how.' The Institute of the title is a school for servants, the lessons they are taught bizarre and repetitive to the point of making 'deja-vu' a permanent state of being. Is the repetition the point of it all or has the teacher lost the plot? If she has, how come we care? None of this is vaguely like real life. None of it, that is, bar the characters emotions. Or is the whole thing like real life, like Life with a capital 'L?' In the end does this sort of pondering make for a good movie? I won't answer that because I'm terribly biased. Remember the title and look it up sometime. It's the cinematic equivalent of a stunning old-fashioned magician's trick. A monochrome bouquet, a sad smile. There are images, scenes that may make the hairs on the back of your neck think they're a cornfield with a twister on the way. I tried to warn you as quietly as I could.

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Unfolds like a dream… but does it mean anything?, 7 April 2002
Author: AdFin from UK

Not for all tastes, Institute Benjamenta is like David Lynch's The Elephant Man via the works of Bergman and silent expressionism. Every single frame in the bizarre odyssey is tightly composed and beautifully printed in black and white. The use of shifts in focus and depth, and the wild juxtapositions of the most mundane actions, allowing them to take on any number of connotations only heightens the floating dream like atmosphere, as we are dumped into this world with no idea of what is going on, or what is going to happen. But this film is terribly slow (this is were the Bergman element comes into play), and it's a test of the viewer's concentration to see the film through. But unlike Bergman, Institute Benjamenta does not pay off at the end, nor does it leave the viewer puzzled, conflicted and desperate to experience the film again (ala Persona).

Instead Institute Benjamenta just ends, and personally I have no desire to watch the film again, I felt I got everything I could and wanted to gain from the experience. The acting was good, suitably distant and with the right level of cold detachment, but there was a constant feeling the actors were plating second fiddle to the sumptuous visuals put on show by the famed animators the brothers Quay. It's sad that they have yet to make another live action film, as the wealth of great ideas and knowledge of film-making displayed in Institute Benjamenta is one-hundred times better than most of the recent films I've seen, if the Brothers had put a little more time into the depth of the narrative, they could have backed up those haunting images with some much needed substance.

This is not a film for everyone, as I have already stated. The nonsensical narrative and bursts of surrealism will undoubtedly put off some viewers, but this is a film that should have a wider audience. In a cinematic world of conventions and formulas the brothers Quay made a film that, although by no means great, showed originality and definite promise, that makes Institute Benjamenta a film worthy of cult classic status.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
a moving picture work of art, 9 January 2006

Author: meandros from Transilvania, RO.

It is fairly rare that moving pictures are made with real artistic value in mind and even more rare when the endeavor pays off. Well, The Quay brothers' Institute Benjamenta is one such picture. At first sight it might appear a little too pretentious with an abounding array of hidden symbolism of a strange and antique meaning but then again, the basic thread of the picture is as old as humanity itself, pointing back to the ancestral roots of what makes us human: to love and to loose. It is remarkable the technique and the rendering of the camera in the Quay brothers' masterpiece. You cannot but help wondering if the images themselves are not centuries old and, in a sense, that is exactly the aim of the picture, to make itself look old and timeless, at the same time. I urge anyone who is really looking for that special feeling films give us, far from commercialism and hollywoodia, to see this movie. Sure, most of you will find it a little bit hard to watch but if you give it patience and let the mood of the picture fill you from within your imagination then I think this will be a rewarding cinematic experience.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Eccentrically sombre, 8 November 2000

Author: Afracious from England

A quiet and softly spoken man arrives at a ghostly building to enrol for the servants class taught there. He rings the doorbell and is greeted by a monkey's face through the small hole in the door. The man's name is Jakob. He enters and meets one of the two owners (a brother and sister). The brother is unpleasant, and informs Jakob that there are no favourites here.

Jakob goes into class to meet the other students. They all announce their names to him and then fall over. The lessons are presumptuous and iterative. They involve the men swaying from side to side and standing on one leg. They really are quite eccentric. The institute seems to be its own little world away from reality, with its low ceiling rooms. The sister soon has a strange fondness for Jakob. This is a very sombre film, but has a unique air to it. The pacing is pedestrian, but you stay with it. The acting is good, and the camerawork is meticulous and probing.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Icily faultless, splendidly null, 25 August 2000

Author: GPeoples-2

If this has a meaning beyond the one on the surface, which carries no conviction, it's one of the classic horror films. But so far I can't see that it does. The authoritarian, sexually perverse world it depicts seems the creation of someone who has never experienced oppression or obsession at first hand and has nothing to say about it. This is a totally artificial and hermetic work. On the other hand, its distance from reality and purpose allows its manufacturers to take as much time as they please to refine and distill its essence, as in a bottle. But what is it they're distilling? Whatever it is, it gives off a lovely scent. One exquisite shot follows another; the actors are perfectly cast. Alice Krige I suppose can be called a cult figure now (I'm one of the cult), and in this she has finally found the ideal environment. The film is never uninteresting but should have been disturbing, and some day I hope to find something inside it.

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A bit long for a music video, 11 August 2005
Author: manuel-pestalozzi from Zurich, Switzerland

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.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
If you liked the abstractness and mood of "Eraserhead", you might enjoy this, too., 12 January 2007

Author: fedor8 (fedor8@yahoo.com) from Serbia

The Brothers Quay continue employ their unique style in their first feature film, except that this time around there are real people - not to mention dialog. Their first attempt at something half-way close to semi-normal turns out to be a visually excellent film, where images steal the show, while the plot (if there is one) remains known only to the Quay Brothers. The "story" is very vague, and in that way this film reminds me of "Eraserhead" (though "Eraserhead" is even more abstract); also reminds me of Lynch's movie as far as the mood and the small amount of dialog is concerned. There are some truly weird scenes here. And while watching "Eraserhead" is an intense experience, watching this film turns out to be rather relaxing at times. Additional viewings don't help much in clarifying things. Or maybe I'm just too dumb.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Beautiful way to pass the time, 12 August 2001
Author: ellkew from London

A truly wonderful film that slowly unfolds images of great beauty before you. I particularly like the through the keyhole moment and the dust being brushed aside by the clock pendulum. But mentioning specific scenes is to distract from the whole work which is I am sure is as close to a dream as one would get without sleeping. I adore Alice Krige in it and the way scenes have been constructed with the actors placed within the whole composition of the frame. I would not recommend this film, rather I think it is much better to discover it yourself and cherish it.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Mmmmm, 27 January 1999
Author: Dave-369 from Cambridge, MA

The first time I saw this movie, I fell asleep--but I don't blame the movie at all. I was tired. Before I fell asleep, I found it frustrating and oblique. But when I woke up, suddenly the dream logic of the movie seemed to make sense. Then I saw it again.

Often compared to Eraserhead, I think this movie has much, much more to offer than Lynch's first feature. Institute Benjamenta doesn't have any kind of decoder...in fact, it refuses any. Filmed in a hazy, drowsy black-and-white, with scenes of flat, if surreal, simplicity, interspersed with dreamy, nonsensical interludes, it must be accepted before it can be enjoyed.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
The Emperor's New Institute, 14 November 2006

Author: dubyah1

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Pretension with a microbudget. Larry Miller says, 'art shouldn't wring its hands': I was so happy to have found this DVD after years of searching, but got weltschmerz instead of zeitgeist. Dreary, angsty, self-congratulating symbolism, and may I never see another antler, even an ironic pair.

I'm a fan of Mark Rylance's stage and most of his film work, but this is a clinker. It reminds me of another wankerish flick, Guy Maddin's 'Tales from the Gimli Hospital': same crummy film stock, same low-budget pretension, same deep need for the directors to use their audience as therapists. 'Institute' appears to have been shot with a videocam & bargain-basement special effects doubtless by the director brothers; it has the makings of an OK 4-minute video, but the occasional beautiful shot of Mark Rylance's beautiful mouth can't make up for the wanna-be Bergman antics. Nine, circles, hell, we get it. Sheesh. you don't have to hit us over the head with the cloven hoof.

Run, my friends, run far, far away. Rent 'Wild Strawberries' for the Bergman, 'Angels and Insects' for the Rylance, 'Excalibur' for the Orff, and 'Blood and Donuts' for the low-budget horror passion play that *works*: you'll thank me. Two stars for Mark Rylance's mouth's acting.

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