Surviving Life (Czech: Přežít svůj život) is a 2010 Czech comedy film by Jan Švankmajer, starring Václav Helšus, Klára Issová and Zuzana Kronerová. The film uses a mix of cutout animation from photographs and live-action segments, and tells the story of a married man who lives a double life in his dreams, where he meets another woman. It premiered out of competition at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.
Plot
The movie opens with a self-deprecating introduction by director Jan Svankmajer, apologizing for the fact that the film is not live-action but rather created through paper cutout animation.
Evžen carries a gigantic egg through the city, dropping it upon being approached by a lady who mistakes him for a man named Milan. Evžen and the woman, Eva, talk and agree to get coffee together. However, Evžen is awoken in bed by his wife, Milada, revealing that the encounter was merely a dream.
Mesmerized by the lady, Evžen seeks to see her again. He overeats to trigger dreaming at the advice of a coworker, making himself ill. Once asleep, he reencounters the woman, now going by Eliza. He comes with her to her dwellings to dance and observes that she has scars on her wrists from a suicide attempt. Other inhabitants of the dream realm he meets during his sojourns include Eliza’s son Peter, an elderly homeless woman representing the superego, and Peter’s father Milan, who looks identical to Evžen.
Evžen begins to see psychoanalyst Dr. Holubová, who examines his dreams through the lens of Freud and Jung. Returning to the dreamland, he finds that Peter has completely vanished and the dream woman, now named Emily, has no memory of her son. Evžen is confronted over the disappearance by Milan, who trips over Peter’s blocks and dies upon striking his head.
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