Surviving Life is certainly the best film on its subject, dreams, ever made. It doesn't really have a message or any particular point of view to get across about dreams. The main character comes to understand his, which drives the mystery of the plot, but that doesn't make his life magically better, as it would in Hollywood movies. What the film does is display dreams as they actually are. This must be the only example of a realist rather than a romantic taking dreams as his subject, and as such it is invaluable. It does comment on theories of dreams a little, which is quite fun with portraits of Freud and Jung literally duking it out while a psychologist's analysis favors one and then another. Thoughout there are loads of wonderful, funny ideas like that as is typical of a svankmajer film, and I think this is probably his best.
Review of Surviving Life
