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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9786305957690
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
ISBN: 630595769X
Label: Kino Video
Manufacturer: Kino Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Kino Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: August 01, 2000
Running Time: 101 minutes
Sales Rank: 81308
Studio: Kino Video
Theatrical Release Date: August 23, 1996
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
A dejected, hopeless soul, Jakob (Mark Rylance, Angels and Insects) walks through the door of a dilapidated mansion and into a shadowy world pitched somewhere between the 19th century and the imagination. It's a school for servants, where Jakob is prepared to sacrifice his individuality for a life of servitude and subservience. 'There's but one lesson repeated endlessly,' he observes. 'None of us will amount to much. Later in life we will be something small and subordinate.' Jakob throws himself into his repetitive, meaningless exercises, learning the fine art of humiliation at the hands of his lovely but haunted teacher, Lisa Benjamenta (Alice Krige), who runs the slowly collapsing school with her demanding, lonely brother, Johann (Fassbinder regular Gottfried John). The live-action feature debut of surrealist animators the Brothers Quay, Institute Benjamenta is a dreamy, self-contained world rich in physical detail (obscure signs, the bric-a-brac and detritus of yesteryear), which cinematographer Nic Knowland captures with a foggy, gauzy black-and-white softness, like a turn-of-the-century film. Full of fantasies and dream sequences and laced with brief snippets of animation, it's a film of strange and wondrous imagery, but an elusive story that loses itself in long, meditative sequences of monotonous action and droning narration. Many will find the deliberate pacing slow going, but this deliriously strange and fragile world lost in its own timelessness offers a mesmerizing dream alternative to traditional narrative cinema. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - brilliance
Institute Benjamenta is a brilliant brew of dream, N.European myth, Buddhist philsophy, and emotional repression and longing, and asks us what it means to exist in a world. It's mesmerizing in dark-toned black and white, full of rich textures and fascinating camerawork, often coming across as a film and story from 100 years ago. Maybe unsurprisingly; it's based on the German novel Jakob Von Gunten by Robert Walser (who was possibly mad), written in 1908, though for the Quays this is only a jumping ... Read More
Rating: - Enter... and be astound...
Enter "Institute Benjamenta" is entering a world that is almost... other worldy.
Strange maybe, but it's a world created by the twin brothers Stephen and Timothy Quay who are known for their claustrophobic animated shorts which are little dreamlike environments, filled with wood, iron, feathers, shattered glass and worn-out, strange little moving puppet things. Now there is their first live action feature and the Quays have managed to keep the dark brooding atmosphere that was so deliciously ... Read More
Rating: - Place That Fork
Strangely haunting. If you are mesmerized by Butoh dance, then this movie should appeal--not for fidgeties predisposed to jazz dance.
I haven't seen this feature since it came out in 1996, yet I still have vivid imagery recurrences of the cinematography. Imagine linking a million painstakenly taken sequences of still photographs, printed in sepia-tone, and you'll get an idea what this movie is like to watch. How you view this movie will depend on your state of mind and you're patience ... Read More
Rating: - The very best I ever saw
in black and white....How fascinating the light lies like water on Ms Benjamenta's face (first scene) and later flows golden from her mouth...Jacob van Gunten compared to a monkey and soon afterwards to a hart...Wonderful...Mystical...This is a movie you may watch, and then watch and watch and still enjoy it like the fairy tales of your childhood, only now they are filled with erotic implications. Funny moments in between. The right thing to buy and not only rent...I saw it quite often and still know ... Read More
Rating: - the quay bros are a trip.period.
these two directors are the answer to all the crappy movies forced upon the public these days.basically,all their films are done in distinctly different way by cinematagrophy,script,and just the whole "atmoshere" in general.if you think of yourself as an open-minded individual get this dvd and also pick up the collection of short films they've released(get that for "the street of crocodiles"alone!such a total trip!!!)if you find yourself getting rid of these after you've seen them then consider yourself ... Read More
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