User:Levihoffman/Daisies (film)

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[Daisies (Czech: Sedmikrásky) is a 1966 Czechoslovakian surrealist comedy-drama film written and directed by Věra Chytilová. The film is regarded as a milestone of the Czechoslovak New Wave movement. It follows two young girls (Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová), both named Marie, who engage in strange pranks. Originally planned as a satire of bourgeois decadence, the movie targets those attached to rules and was referred to by Chytilová as "a necrologue about a negative way of life.] Daisies also inverts the stereotypical ideas of women and redraws them to the heroines' advantage.

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Throughout the film, the two main characters serve as hyperbolical pawns for Chytilová’s satirical approach to female stereotypes. There is a tangible anti-patriarchy sentiment in the film, observed through the two Maries' interactions with the men in their lives. Chytilová’s extensive use of the “doll” metaphor is a means to show a male-dominated society’s absurd expectations of women by overplaying their stereotypical attributions. In the beginning of the film, we see Marie 1 and Marie 2 sitting down and as they move, we hear creaking sounds as if coming from an unoiled hinge. The opening establishes the metaphor of the women behaving as marionettes. A further use of the metaphor is depicting the protagonists as shallow and empty creatures, devoid of any human quality. Usually observed in sexist narratives, women are portrayed as lesser beings and by blowing these assumptions out of proportion, Chytilová aims to show the absurdity of the “patriarchal idea of femininity”. Film writer Ela Bittencourt notes that Chytilová uses “the stereotype of how women are often infantilized and as a weapon right here in this film”.

The heroines as “infantilized women” with high-tone voices and their childish mannerisms is what is “expected of them” by the men in their lives as they do not realize the deliberate act both women put on.

The film was state-approved and had limitations in its production. Many right-wing socialist conservatives criticized the film for its appropriation of gluttony and the alleged support it shows for the heroines. In an era of communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Chytilová was “accused of nihilism” at the time of the release of Daisies. The film was condemned to be unfit for the socialist ideas of the time. A Visiting Professor at Staffordshire University and author of The Czechoslovak New Wave, Peter Hames commented that the officials “objected primarily to its avant-garde form, the fact that the girls didn’t provide a moral example, and they no doubt correctly saw it as an attack on establishment values”. The food-fights and immense consumerism that Marie 1 and Marie 2 instigate were believed to be unrepresentative of the political agenda of the state.

The film has very little in the way of plot structure, and scenes proceed from one to the next chaotically, frequently switching between black and white, color, and filtered or tinted footage. These stylistic choices in Daisies tie back to some of its themes. Both women are seen to generate destruction anywhere they go and this is reflected in the editing and montaging of the film. This kind of editing and collage-work may also indicate the multi-facedness of the marionettes, not as the simple creatures that patriarchal societies may make them out to be.