Writing
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Based on the only extensive prose work by the surrealist painter Josef Capek, Shades of Fern most resembles the philosophical fairy tales and fables of Josef’s older brother, the legendary Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Two young poachers, more boys than men, kill a gamekeeper when they are caught illegally hunting. Panicked, they retreat into a forest that grows steadily more forbidding and deadly as their fear for the future—and guilt over their action—mounts. Loosely based on hundreds of oral folk tales and legends that haunt the woods of Czechoslovakia, Vlácil’s contemporary updating artistically underscores the relationship between man and nature, crime and punishment, isolation and society, and guilt and memory.
Different animals play with a marble in this whimsical story from Hermína Týrlová, ‘the mother of Czech animation’
The two heroes of the film's story - the decent but dry engineer Zárub and the marriage swindler Majer - are granted this wish by the mysterious forces of the moon. The two men change their appearance, which, however, contrasts sharply with their unchanged characters and voices. The incomprehensible swap naturally becomes the source of many comic plots and situations.
A family purchases a home robot designed to look like a grandmum. Their neighbours immediately buy a more expensivve model as the two families always try to up the other one. Both grandmums start to "terorize" their families because they were set up to ensure the mums exercise, the kids study etc. Apart from that they start causing problems to the other family ... cut ropes with hanging clothes, pierced tires, etc. Once they get to killing each other family's pets the parents get really worried about the safety of their kids. The grannys later destroy each other while fighting and the families decide that they'll be better off without any robots. (It's some time since I saw this so the details may be off.) Mainly thanks to the design of the robots it's rather a comedy than a horror. Unless you are ten. And a rather good comedy!
