“Dwelling” and “We eat the fruits of paradise trees”

A man is brought into an apartment that does not function according to the logic of the reality known to us: the tap throws a stone instead of water, the spoons are perforated, the mirror shows only the back of the head, and the door closes like a stitched body. In Jan Švankmajer's Apartment, space ceases to be neutral — it becomes a system of resistance of matter to man. The film is set in 1968, at the last moment of the Prague Spring, before the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops closes a short period of political and artistic liberalization.

On the other hand, the Prague Spring — after its suppression — we eat the fruits of paradise trees to Věra Chytilova. The film begins like a dream about the world before the fall: Adam and Eve move in a colorful, double-lit Eden, accompanied by the Genesis choir. But this paradise quickly turns out to be a world of control, suspicion and violence.

Chytilová, one of the most important figures of the Czech New Wave, is directing the film after the suppression of the Prague Spring, at a time when culture is being subjected to “normalization”.

The surreal form here is not escapism, but the language of discord. Together, the two films create a picture of Czechoslovakia as a space in which reality itself begins to waver — first in the matter of objects, then in the structure of myths.