Institute Benjamenta

or ‘This Dream People Call Human Life’

Directed by the Brothers Quay, 1995, 105 minutes

Jakob von Gunten (Mark Rylance) enrols at the Institute Benjamenta, a school for servants. There he encounters disenchanted principal (Gottfried John), lonely instructress Lisa Benjamenta (Alice Krige) and their bizarre teaching methods.

Born in the United States, twin brothers Stephen and Timothy Quay have lived and worked in Britain since the 1960s. Achieving prominence in the late 1980s, their intricate short animations suited MTV’s nascent video jukebox format. Throughout the 1990s they enjoyed a fruitful partnership with Channel 4 in the UK, working with producer Keith Griffiths who nurtured so many up-and-coming animators. Their eclectic output includes commercials for Dulux and Kellogg, stage design for Opera North’s production of Prokofiev’s ‘The Love of Three Oranges’ (1988) and the ‘Overworlds and Underworlds’ project in Leeds (2012). It is difficult to separate the personality of the Quays from their art. The technical rigour of their animation style requires a close working relationship and the twins prefer to be described as a single unit rather than individuals; they exist in an imaginative world of their own making which, like their London studio, overflows with found objects and esoterica. The Quays are sometimes compared to Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer but although they admire his work, they lack his earthy sense of humour and penchant for outspoken social criticism. They are closer in spirit to the work of Walerian Borowczyk, hints of his themes and style, particularly his lingering focus on texture, liquids and fabric can be discerned in their first non-animated film ‘Institute Benjamenta’ (1995) which is adapted from a novel by Swiss author Robert Walser (1878-1956). Walser’s experience of training for domestic service inspired his novel ‘Jakob von Gunten’ (1909), a witty response to the heroic literature of teenage angst. His musings on life and education may follow in the tradition of Goethe’s Werther or Musil’s Törless but Jakob is more self-aware and much funnier than either of these characters; one moment he extolls the grace of selfless service, the next he yearns for decadent celebrity. Dogged by spiritual turmoil Walser seemed unable to reconcile his literary ambitions and his yearning for quiet conformity; diagnosed with schizophrenia, he ended his life in an asylum. The Quays echo his lonely death there on Christmas Day 1956 during the wintry climax of ‘Institute Benjamenta’.

The Quays prioritise setting and mood over the ironic social commentary of the source novel and overlay Walser’s story with the intricate filigree of their own interests. In the novel, when Jakob penetrates the Institute’s inner chambers, Lisa guides him through a symbolic journey of bracing moral tuition. In the film, Jakob’s experiences are more ambiguous and intimate. His relationship with tutor Lisa Benjamenta (Alice Krige) and her brother (Gottfried John) becomes a ritualistic dance of dominance and submission. The Quays amplify the erotic undercurrents of Walser’s writing to create a simmering study of sexual frustration. Krige’s mesmerising performance has a chilled, languid intensity; Lisa longs to be touched but masochistically denies herself release. Herr Benjamenta is unable to express his romantic interest in Jakob and his desire remains awkwardly platonic. In the Institute carnal pleasure is always more intense without a partner, despite its inviting orifices and totems of fertility, its fantasies remain a closed circle. For the Quays Walser’s novel becomes an eroticised retelling of Snow White with Lisa as a lost princess and the students as her devoted dwarves (her “little saplings”) lost in an enchanted forest.

Recurring motifs of antlers and hooves may suggest animal pleasures of pursuit and capture and the Institutes fixtures and fittings seem to possess a mysterious and sensual hidden life. For the Quays the distinction between organic and inorganic life is seldom straightforward and they understand that humans often have an emotional relationship with inanimate objects. Before dismissing their animism as fanciful, consider how closely it resembles advertising campaigns that encourage us to identify with the soul or spirit of an ‘iconic’ brand or compare the loving gaze and intense focus that we bestow on our mobile phones to our defensive surveillance of other people in public spaces. The Quays are successful advertisers because they can invest a product with a sense of personality. Animism and animation are intimately related: The best animators imbue lifeless objects with the appearance of consciousness and when we watch their work we are struck by a sense of wonder, but also of the uncanny, as described by Freud. Conversely, the Quays pose and shoot their human cast as if they were puppets. Students at the Institute Benjamenta aspire towards servile anonymity and constant repetition of pointless routines prepares them for the banal rituals of working life. These exercises lend the students the appearance of broken mechanical mannequins, like the shop assistants of ‘Street of Crocodiles’ (1986). The actors’ artificial appearance and stilted movements deny the viewer any comforting points of reference and heighten the film’s disquieting tone.

The novel ‘Institute Benjamenta’ describes Jakob’s experiences in the town beyond the Institute, but the Quays confine the action almost completely within its walls, this enables them to create a dreamlike setting akin to those found in their animation. Forced perspective and trompe l’œil evoke an arcane hinterland where conventions of time and space no longer apply: Interior and exterior become confused in rooms carpeted with pine needles decorated with unsettling hunting trophies and reliquaries for mythical saints displaying thorny, bleeding hearts. Walser’s writings conceal a visionary tendency at odds with their mundane subjects and settings. ‘The Walk’ (1917) begins as a simple literary perambulation but becomes an experience more akin to the ecstatic fugues of Allen Ginsberg. Walser’s heightened perception, perhaps a symptom of his mental condition, infuses everyday details with a seraphic glow and profound spiritual significance but there are times when reality seems to overwhelm him. His strangely prescient piece ‘The Street’ (1919) could easily be describing the paranoia and isolation that haunt the digital thoroughfares of the twenty-first century.

One of the Quay’s most remarkable gifts is their facility for manipulating time. Their exquisite miniature films like ‘Dramolet’ (which also concerns Walser) are replete with meaning yet exist for mere moments, like dream fragments. The timetabled rigour of the Institute constantly threatens relapse into a somnolent, hypnagogic state where time stands still, light shifts like sunshine in time-lapse to suggest the passage of time outside its walls. Walser’s novel is a stream of consciousness disregards conventional clock time; his style reflects philosophical debate at the turn of the 19^th Century as industrialised societies standardised timekeeping in the interests of greater efficiency and productivity. French philosopher Henri Bergson, whose ideas influenced writers like Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust argued that human perceptions of time are as valid as the measurable laws of physics. Crisis can make time flow faster or slow it down, as can rapture or boredom. Subsequent discoveries about quantum physics and subatomic particles challenge our belief in constants and absolutes. In a world entranced by speed and a cinematic culture driven by the rhythms of dynamic action the Quay’s ability to suspend time is particularly precious and it has won them some surprising admirers: Christopher Nolan has championed the work of the Quays and shares their interest in temporal fluidity. Many of his films feature multiple, interlaced narrative strands where time is stretched or compressed.

Although ‘Institute Benjamenta’ sometimes approaches the socio-political allegory of Borowczyk’s ‘Goto, Island of Love’ (1969) the Quays are so intent on atmosphere that they downplay the more satirical aspects of Walser’s novel and leave the viewer to make their own inferences and conclusions. More alien than science fiction, like Tarkovsky without the human interest, some viewers may struggle to engage with such bizarre characters and their obscure motivations. ‘Institute Benjamenta’ is more like performance art than narrative cinema but those who can adjust to the change of pace will discover that the Institute offers a languorous grace and heady atmosphere unlike anything you have experienced before.

Quotes.

“We have to learn the rules by heart. There is but one lesson here, endlessly repeated over and over again. One will learn very little here. And none of us will amount to much. Later in life, we shall all be something very small and subordinate.” Jakob von Gunten (Mark Rylance)

“Oh, how beautiful it is here, Jakob. If only you could see it. But you mustn’t. That is not for you. But you may feel. The ice, Jakob. How it waits. How patiently it waits and grows. Kiss it, Jakob. Kiss the ice.” Lisa Benjamenta (Alice Krige)

Connections:

Film

‘Goto, Island of Love’ directed by Walerian Borowczyk (1969)

‘Stille Nacht: Dramolet’ directed by the Brothers Quay (1988)

‘The Comb, From the Museums of Sleep’, directed by the Brothers Quay (1990)

‘Stille Nacht 3: Tales from the Vienna Woods’ directed by the Brothers Quay (1992)

‘The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes’ directed by the Brothers Quay (2005)

‘November’ directed by Rainer Sarnet (2017)

Reading

Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, Penguin, 1774, ISBN 978-0140445039

Bergson, Time and Free Will, CreateSpace, 1889, ISBN 978-1979578875

Robert Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless, Penguin, 1906, ISBN 978-0142180006