Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

RainbiwDash42 I think, that movie is very good. The film shows in all its glory one of the most macabre places in the world. The director decided that it was best not to say a word. Really. The spectacle is so shocking that comments are not needed. 70,000 human bones have the interior of the church. The place itself is creepy. Schwankmeier masterfully conveyed this horror. The music is perfect. The atmosphere and suspense are pumped. The operator takes the most beautiful shots. Installation is at height. While there is no better movie about this place. I recommend to all.

MartinHafer While I am a big lover of the films of Jan Svankmajer, I am not blinded to the fact that occasionally he was NOT as his best...and that clearly can be said about "The Ossuary". While the setting is amazing and make the film worth seeing, the filmmaker's techniques in this particular film are distracting and just plain bad. I know Svankmajer fans would blanch at me saying this, but the film seemed cheap and poorly made.There is a crypt in old Czechoslovakia that contains the bones of 70,000 people. But the monks decided to arrange the skulls and skeletons in amazingly ornate and creepy ways...such as a chandelier made up of these parts. I've seen pictures and documentaries about it before...but none like this film. Instead of showing it in the usual way, the film looks as if was made with an 8mm camera and the edits are intentionally annoying and awful. All this is narrated by a rather boring guide who is about as compelling to listen to as a dog with adenoids...accompanied with the rattling of bones. All in all, this is a case where the film couldn't help but be interesting but somehow Svankmajer, in an odd fluke, makes the absolute least of it. A very disappointing short film.

Polaris_DiB As an animator, Jan Svankmajer can turn any inanimate object into a moving, breathing, living thing or character. However, that ability to create out of any material is not just kept to him and his brethren, and oftentimes the act itself can seem somewhat perverse.What to do with a chapel full of dried bones from an era when people died by the thousands every day? Burn it, leave it, forget it, clean it out? Or turn it into an artful mausoleum of sculpture? The sheer power of the imagery in this movie alone is enough to feel awed by the amount of creativity and design in it...whether it came out of Svankmejer's mind or is an actual place (I admit I don't actually know). The editing devices add a spark to it that literally seers the imagery onto the mind. It's the monologue, however, that sends this beyond pure visual appreciation to another realm.The commentator's (apparently some nun or archivist) high opinion of the artist who built the sculpture is self-admiringly inspirational; the narrator herself feels a kind of kindred spirit with him and his work that she expresses with great enthusiasm to people who are just tourists. The tourists themselves, however, seem to have a dire need to be a part of the work as shown by the way they sign or carve their names into the skulls, an act so prominent it eventually leads to a fine if anyone touches it.Then Jan Svankmajer's recording of the voice and images shows his own owning of it, and our watching of it draws us into someone else's imagination through multiple layers to be centered on an audacious yet beautiful work.--PolarisDiB

Jan Novak There are two versions of this short movie - one with a music sound-track and the second one (that was banned during the communistic era) with a sound record of a voice of an "educated" guide (some old women). It is funny and bitter at the same time. There are no visual differences between these two versions, just the sound-track is different. I wondered (and I still wonder:-) which of these two versions is older. The cutting is the same but it is suited to the song. But the second version (with voice soundtrack) was banned, so I suppose that the song was composed because of this reason... One of the (many) nice typical Svankmajer's moments, that I like in this movie, is the squeaking sound of bicycle in the beginning.