Flora (1989) User Reviews

Jan Svankmajer need only 30 seconds to make something both disturbing and fascinating

[Rectangular_businessman · 8/10 · 7 March 2012]

In only 30 seconds, Jan Svankmajer manages to include in this unique and fascinating short all of the common elements that appear in his other works: Here, an humanoid plant (Or maybe plant with humanoid characteristics?) is tied to a bed, being unable to reach a glass of water, while his body starts to decompose.

Here, not only the use of stop-animation is extraordinary, but also the music and the sound effects are enough to give this short a suffocating atmosphere of tension and anguish, with a fascinating imagery that is open to different kind of interpretations. Worth a look, specially if you like strange animated shorts and the works of filmmakers as Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton and the Brothers Quay.

Svankmajer Never Ceases to Amaze

[framptonhollis · 7/10 · 8 January 2016]

Reviewing a film that is only 20 seconds in length is a real challenge. What could you pick a part and criticize about only 20 seconds of filmmaking? Well, not much, but it's still a film that I'd highly recommend, and a film that I find to be greatly interesting, and pretty disturbing in one way or another. There's something about the imagery, atmosphere, and sound effects that create a really uncomfortable short.

I also must mention the lovely animation that I found to be, especially, appealing. Like most Svankmajer films, it's all stop motion, and it looks great. the film may be extremely short in length, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a lot of hard work put into its production.

The final shot of a glass of water was surprisingly bleak, and makes the short feel depressing. This is one really strange and powerful film, and it's only 20 seconds long.

Water, give me water, please....

[Foreverisacastironmess123 · 6/10 · 8 March 2017]

A humanoid thing that's composed of leaves roots vegetables and shoots and that is cruelly tied to an iron bed in what looks to be a hospital room(or a psych ward), sours, shrivels up and disintegrates into mulch before our very eyes. We see that the weirdly beautiful being, as it rapidly becomes less and less, is desperately looking at a glass of water that sits so near and yet so far, right beside it - but plants can't get water by themselves, and if there's no one around to give it... OK so I'm sure that this short must mean something, but the fact is that there's a limit to how short a film can be and still be a good and effective one. And at a mere 30 seconds that flash by in a blink, it's the shortest short I've ever shorted(!) seen, and there's only so much that such a minute amount of time can do for you and you can get out of, because you can't seriously call it a masterpiece or great simply because there's not enough content to go on, even if you're the biggest fan of Mr Svankmajer! Again it's just a flash, but it made me think of unpleasant things like fading away into nothing as you're helpless to stop the dread slow but sure disintegration of the self, and how existence can be fleeting and tenuously reliant on something else, and how we may never think of that precious something else until it stares us in the face as the end draws near, by which point of course it's much too late. This short will do, it's visually striking and for what it is interesting...but due to the practically nonexistent running time it stands as thin as air.

half a minute on the fragility of existence with decomposing fruit

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 29 August 2008]

This is probably the shortest of the Jan Svankmajer short films- and by short it's comparable to the Stan Brakhage shorts that run about the length of a red light- but it's one of his very best. It's about a guy strapped to a bed, a man made up of a lot of vegetables and things, who quickly decomposes right in front of his extremely horrified eyes. It's about this in just visual terms, and brilliantly relayed like one of those horror-show PSA's for drugs, but it's also about mortality. A visceral reaction is the only way to go with this, and you can feel your skin crawl in these mere seconds of the vegetables turning into white-hot maggots and the man's eyes turning into mush. It's one thing to try and describe this to you, but to see it by Svankmajer and his crews' hands are another. Flora is a quick-shot of animation adrenaline to get you feeling for a moment how creepy it really is to decompose.

Simple to the point epic that probably inspired the Brothers Quay

[scarletminded · 10 May 2004]

May contain spoilers.

Very amusing 30 film. It opens with a figure made of fruit and other food on a bed. The food is moving about the figure's body and its face looks very sad. There is a water glass on the table the figure cannot reach.

In 30 seconds a complete story is told. It is about the environment and how it is starving and thirsty. Reminds me of a Brothers Quay film, how they convey stories in a very short span of time. Flora leaves an impression on you.

Weird.....

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 18 January 2013]

Jan Svankmajer is the most unusual stop-motion filmmaker whose work I have seen. Instead of the typical models which are brought to life using this method, Svankmajer takes everyday objects or creepy stuff he's found, perhaps, in antique shops to create films that are truly unique.

Each time I see one of his films, I think I've finally seen his most bizarre and disturbing work. Well, I felt this way again when I saw "Flora"--a very, very short and possibly incomplete film from 1989. It consists of lots and fruits and vegetables all lined up like they are part of a person' body--with a clay head and feet. Very quickly, the food begins rotting and is eaten up by worms--all at a highly accelerated speed. I really am not sure what this all meant, but I said above, it's disturbing to say the least. Probably best for die-hard fans of the man's work.

Decent for this runtime

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 27 August 2016]

Here we have "Flora", a (very) short film from 1989, so this one is already over 25 years old. The director and writer is Jan Svankmajer, one of the Czech Republic's most known filmmakers, even if his area of expertise is mostly in animation only, at least when it comes to his short films. It is very difficult to fit a good film into under 30 seconds, but Svankmajer comes close to it with this one. You can't tell a story or anything. Instead, we see a creature made of fruits and vegetable in a bed and apparently she is about to die. It was a bit of a scary film, even if it was that short. I am sure most other filmmakers' approaches on the subject would have looked worse than Svankmajer's here. But it was not good enough either for me to recommend it unless you really love Svankmajer's work. His style in here is easily recognizable.

turning into a vegetable

[lee_eisenberg · 9 November 2011]

You've heard an incapacitated person described as a vegetable? Well, what if the person in question was made of vegetables? That's the case in Jan Švankmajer's "Flora". Less than a minute long, it shows a person whose body literally consists of plant-based food, all rotting away. He's becoming a double vegetable! Maybe it's about what eventually happens to us all, or maybe it's just Švankmajer's regular surreal cartoon. Whatever the case, it's a neat one. I've liked every Švankmajer cartoon that I've seen, and this is no exception. Cartoons do not have to be cute stuff for children at all. One can easily see how his work influenced Terry Gilliam. Czech it out indeed.

Odd

[Tornado_Sam · 5 September 2022]

What Jan Svankmajer was going for when he created "Flora" seems to be largely a mystery. The film is not even a minute (only 30 seconds) has no title card introducing it, but merely consists of an animation of a person made out of fruits and vegetables in the process of decay. The craft seems polished enough, but it still seems that the film is unfinished, a scrap of animation Svankmajer later published by itself that may have been part of a larger project. Either that or it was merely an exercise in timelapse - although a rather solid one at that. Granted, it's hard to really judge something like this, but it is unique and interesting...even if hardly something one would show another as an introduction to the work of this Czech master.