Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life

Through the Quay brothers’ lens, the central building of the school becomes a labyrinth of unmappable dimensions, in whose dead, dusty interiors the identity of a person is transformed through repetitive actions into a machine devoid of personality. Or rather, that is the institution’s purpose, which is, however, undermined by the repressed desires and instincts of everyone present, particularly the pair of sibling teachers. The Quays build the narrative of their surreal tale around the myth of the chosen one, who in this case is supposed to be the perfect servant. However, he will bring about the ruin of the institute and liberate its sibling pair of leaders from the shackles of perpetual service. The above-mentioned storylines emerge only for a moment as glimpses of rationality from a dream woven by a creative duo of melancholic rag-and-bone men who are fascinated by the patina of extinction on the objects they collect, as well as by how those objects waste away and reveal their cadaverous nature even more in their interactions with the living. Institute Benjamenta can thus take viewers back to their own memories of the dingy interiors of adolescence. It evokes the emotions experienced during a summer spent exploring the nooks and crannies of their old grandmother’s house, where all of the objects covered in a musty patina evoke both fear and hypnotic fascination. Though the film clearly deserved the largest possible audience, the exceptional screening at the Aero cinema, whose large screening room hosted only a handful of scattered viewers, was the absolutely ideal space for Institute Benjamenta to make a flawless impression. That is also partly because it is a film that you can doze off to, as it splendidly stimulates the dreaming mind, so it is wonderful to wake up to it and look around to see where you are in the moment. (2022.09.17)