Dimensions of Dialogue by Jan Svankmajer (1982)

Jan Svankma­jer is a sur­re­al­ist Czech ani­ma­tor whose work has influ­enced Tim Bur­ton, The Broth­ers Quay, and Ter­ry Gilliam him­self. With his list of The Ten Best Ani­mat­ed Films, Gilliam points us to one film, Svankmajer’s stun­ning 1982 clay­ma­tion short, Dimen­sions of Dia­logue, writ­ing:

Jan Svankma­jer’s stop-motion work uses famil­iar, unre­mark­able objects in a way which is deeply dis­turb­ing. The first film of his that I saw was Alice, and I was extreme­ly unset­tled by the image of an ani­mat­ed rab­bit which had real fur and real eyes. His films always leave me with mixed feel­ings, but they all have moments that real­ly get to me; moments that evoke the night­mar­ish spec­tre of see­ing com­mon­place things com­ing unex­pect­ed­ly to life.