Wednesday 23 March 2011

Review on The Brothers Quay

Review on The Brothers Quay

The Quay Brothers

The bothers; Stephen and Timothy Quay are both identical twins who produce stop motion animation with dark, gritty and psychological deep twisted short stories, as mentioned on indiemoviesonline.com. 'Like a modern brothers Grimm (or perhaps just grim), they produce psychologically deep, dark little fairy stories. In a bleak and gritty world covered with dust and cobwebs, where decay is the prominent factor, the brothers offer a gateway into their surreal imaginations through their disjointed short films.' (Indie Movies Online, 2010) The Quay brothers are influenced and quite often base their work on other artists and writers. They are also influenced by East European art and literature. Those that have influenced the Quay brothers are discussed by James Rose on sensesofcinema.com. 'Their films have been adaptations of texts by Bruno Schulz, Robert Walser, Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll. Visually, their imagery is a hybrid constructed from the depths of art history: Ernst, Bacon, Arcimboldo, Fragonard, Bosch and Escher all make fleeting appearances within their work.' (Rose, 2011) The films produced by The Brothers Quay are surreal and hard to understand or meant to be interpreted using your imagination in your own way. This is quoted by Vincent Canby on movies.nytimes.com. 'Surrealist films aren't meant to be interpreted in the systematic manner of a foreign language. One reads into them what one will, and, in this case, if one has any knowledge of the source material, what one can. The Quay films have the initial impact of monstrous, extremely personal visions of disorder, set in a pocket-sized universe where effects have little to do with causes.' (Canby, 1987)

  Street of Crocodiles

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Kubik, Mariusz (2010) The Quay Brothers. [Photograph] At: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brothers_Quay_Fot_Mariusz_Kubik_July_24_2010_03.JPG (Accessed on: 23.03.11)

Figure 2. Quay, Stephen Quay, Timothy (1986) Street of Crocodiles. [Screen cap] At: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53591430@N00/3887490912 (Accessed on: 23.03.11)

Bibliography

Canby, Vincent (1987) The Quay Brothers. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B0DE5DC163DF93AA15757C0A961948260 (Accessed on: 23.03.11)

Indie Movies Online (2010) The Quay Brothers come to IndieMovies. http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/news/the-quay-brothers-come-to-indiemovies-140410 (Accessed on: 23.03.11)

Rose, James (2011) Stephan and Timothy Quay. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2004/great-directors/quay_brothers/ (Accessed on: 23.03.11)

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