A Case for a Young Hangman

Made during the '68 crisis, this allegorical satire updates Swift (Gulliver's travels to Laputa and Balnibarbi) and Lewis Carroll, presenting an episodic account of the 35-year-old hero's nightmare journey to a world which he encounters on the other side of a road tunnel. No surprise to discover that it's very much like contemporary Czechoslovakia. Here is absurdity, transgression, jet-black comedy and the unexplained. Shot using graphic inserts, split images, slo-mo and fish-eye lenses, it recreates the mood of Kafka-esque paranoia that writer/director Jurácek had used more directly in his earlier Joseph Kilián. If its abundant allusions and cross-references are difficult to decipher for the uninitiated, the Czech censors had no such problems - they promptly banned it for 20 years.