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Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life is a British film of genre Drama directed by Frères Quay with Alice Krige
Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995)
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Add to a movie listInstitute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life, released in 1996, was the first feature-length film by the Brothers Quay, produced by Keith Griffiths and Janine Marmot. It is based on Jakob von Gunten, a novel written by Robert Walser. It stars Mark Rylance, Alice Krige, and Gottfried John.
Synopsis
The plot follows Jakob, a young man who enters a school, run by brother and sister Herr and Lisa Benjamenta, which trains servants. The teachers emphasize to the students that they are unimportant people. Jakob finds the school to be an oppressive environment, and does not enjoy the lessons in subservience that he receives. He proceeds to challenge the Benjamentas and attempts to shift their perspectives. Lisa is attracted to Jakob and spends time with him, and shows him the secret labyrinth below the school. Lisa soon dies and after her death the institute closes. Herr Benjamenta and Jakob then leave together.Actors
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Suggestions of similar film to Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life
There are 57 films with the same actors, 5 films with the same director, 65895 with the same cinematographic genres (including 561 with exactly the same 2 genres than Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life), to have finally 70 suggestions of similar films.If you liked Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life, you will probably like those similar films :
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Directed by Frères Quay
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama
Themes Dance films
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Rating65%
, 1h39Directed by Frères Quay
Origin German
Genres Drama, Science fiction, Fantasy, Musical, Romance
Themes La fin du monde, Disaster films, Films about earthquakes
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A 19th-century opera singer is murdered on-stage shortly before her forthcoming wedding. Soon after being slain by the nefarious Dr. Emmanuel Droz during a live performance, Malvina van Stille is spirited away to the inventor's remote villa to be reanimated and forced to play the lead in a grim production staged to recreate her abduction. As the time for the performance draws near, piano tuner of earthquakes Felisberto sets out to activate the seven essential automata who dot the dreaded doctor's landscape and make sure all the essential elements are in place. Once again instilled with life after her brief stay in the afterworld, amnesiac Malvina is soon drawn to the mysterious Felisberto as a result of his uncanny resemblance to her one-time fiancé Adolfo.
This Unnameable Little Broom (1985)
, 11minutesDirected by Frères Quay
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Fantasy, Horror, Animation
Rating69%
In the film, Gilgamesh is a grotesque, Picasso-esque being who moves by tricycle and patrols his box-shaped kingdom that hovers above a dark abyss. The yellow walls are inscribed with calligraphic text and its seemingly vast expanse is randomly broken up by square holes from which medical hooks occasionally project. A table – a mechanism and a trap – concealing a pulsating vagina within one of its drawers, stands at the centre of Gilgamesh’s domain. High above this space are strung high-tension wires, vibrating in the wind, one caught with a broken tennis racquet. First, Gilgamesh is seen setting up a bizarre trap to lure and catch the wild man Enkidu (who is depicted as a bird-like creature, partially made of genuine animal skeletons). Enkidu appears to live in a distant forest world visible through a hatch in the side of one of the walls of the floating kingdom. Gilgamesh is seen eating dandelion fluff during the opening credits before he finishes readying the trap. Once finished, Gilgamesh retreats to a room beneath the floor of the floating kingdom, awaiting Enkidu's arrival. Sometime later, Enkidu enters and becomes intrigued by a table with an anatomical, H.R. Giger/da Vinci-esque image of a woman's muscles (symbolizing the character Shamhat). The mechanism activates allowing Enkidu to look inside the image revealing a swaying piece of meat on a hook within the woman’s body. A drawer on the table opens, revealing the pulsating vagina. Ecstatic, Enkidu begins to mount the table, which sets off Gilgamesh's trap, flinging him onto the high-tension wires. An excited Gilgamesh resurfaces, retrieving the ensnared Enkidu by means of a giant gold cloth. Gilgamesh binds his captive with twine, beats him with a spiked club, and brushes his wings before cutting them off with scissors. Gilgamesh cuts the twine binding Enkidu and as the gold cloth falls to the ground the viewer is given a shot of Enkidu’s forest. The same fluff that Gilgamesh was eating earlier litters the forest floor and the viewer is allowed to observe an insect husk rapidly decay. In the end, Gilgamesh is seen riding frenzied circles around Enkidu, who is now trapped beneath the table-mechanism on which the trap was set.
In Absentia (2000)
, 20minutesDirected by Frères Quay
Origin United-kingdom
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Rating69%
A seated woman, alone in a chair at a table in a room on one of the top floors of an asylum, repeatedly writes on a piece of paper and sharpens pencils. The pencil point often breaks under her fingers' force. She places the broken points outside the window on the sill. A satanic figure is somewhere nearby, animated and made of straw or clay, not flesh. A spotlight lights up her window randomly. She finishes her writing, tears the paper from the pad, folds it, places it in an envelope, and slips it through a slot that contains many more letters. Great emphasis is placed on extreme close-ups of the objects central to her existence: the pencils, the sharpener, the paper, her cramped, clenching hands, blackened fingernails, endless stubs of broken-off lead, and finally the letters themselves, packaged up and 'posted' uselessly into a grandfather clock.
Nocturna Artificialia (1979)
, 21minutesDirected by Frères Quay
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Animation
Rating63%
The story is told in eight parts and begins with a man in his apartment. He sees a red tram out his window and leaves his apartment to wait for the next tram to come by. As he sees the next tram approaching him, he puts his arms up to signal it to stop. At the same time, the wind begins to blow and a curtain from an open window in his apartment complex blows outward toward the sky. He boards the tram and for a while rides through the night continuously looking forward instead of out the windows at the scenery. Finally, in slow motion, he begins to move toward the curtain on the window of the tram and pulls it back. He sees strange objects as he passes through the night(such as a dart board and some tree trunks held up by metal bars). All these objects are the only thing he can see when he passes them because they are engulfed in light, while the areas surrounding the objects is pitch black. As the tram continues on, it appears to disappear around him and he is back in a makeshift version of his apartment looking out the blinds of his window. He closes the blinds and seems to be startled by something. He follows it to the vent in his wall and looks into it. There appears to be nothing in the vent and he turns away disappointed. The wind begins to blow harder outside as another tram passes by his apartment complex. He then gets the idea to take off the screen of his vent and stick his hand into it. As he reaches trying to find anything in the vent the scenery of the movie changes again and he is back riding on the tram holding what looks like a crumbled piece of paper with a blood stain on it. After he sees the paper he passes out in the seat of the tram and awakens in the makeshift version of his apartment. He puts the crumbled, blood-stained paper on a hanger to dry and the movie begins to spin showing different unidentifiable objects. Finally, the movie stops spinning and shows the front of a church. The man is again inside of the red tram, that seems to be driving through the middle of the church, looking out of the window. The screen switches from pitch black to different arts on the inside of the church in the point of view like the audience themselves are riding the tram. Time passes and the man is at a loss of where he is. He looks around confused and again, finds himself in his apartment. It is obvious that time has passed because the lighting is much darker and the mood is much more sleepy. After this, the man is on the tram and the scenery switches between him on the tram and the objects from earlier in the movie. The man is riding along and the tram accelerates. The tram goes faster and faster and the man's head thrusts back as the wind blows against him. This results in him falling off of a chair that he apparently played like it was the tram. He falls backward off the chair and hits his head on the ground. He tries to get up, but fails. More time passes (as can be seen as the light from outside rises and falls) and he is still motionless on the ground as the movie ends.
A Tale of Two Cities (1980)
, 2h42Origin USA
Genres Drama, Historical, Animation, Romance
Themes Political films, French Revolution films
Actors Chris Sarandon, Peter Cushing, Alice Krige, Billie Whitelaw, Nigel Hawthorne, Flora Robson
Rating65%
Dickens' London-lawyer hero (Chris Sarandon) makes the ultimate sacrifice for the woman he loves in Paris during the Reign of Terror.
See You in the Morning (1989)
, 1h59Directed by Alan J. Pakula
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Comedy-drama, Romantic comedy, Romance
Actors Jeff Bridges, Alice Krige, Farrah Fawcett, Drew Barrymore, Lukas Haas, David Dukes
Rating58%
While Beth Goodwin (Alice Krige) is a happily married mother of two children, living with a pianist (David Dukes), psychiatrist Larry Livingstone (Jeff Bridges) is living in New York with wife Jo (Farrah Fawcett) and their two young children. Three years later, Beth’s husband Peter suddenly becomes paralyzed in his hands and commits suicide, leaving Beth and the children heartbroken. Larry is abandoned by his wife and two children, who have moved to London since the split.
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Actors John Hurt, Rosana Pastor, Alice Krige, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Johan Leysen, Simon Chandler
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, 1h30Directed by Anita W. Addison
Origin USA
Genres Drama
Themes Films about adoption, Films about children, Films about families, Films about sexuality, Rape in fiction
Actors Anne Bancroft, Lynn Whitfield, Alice Krige, Cara Buono, Gloria Reuben, Jesse L. Martin
Rating65%
In Boston in the early 1960s, Geraldine Cummins was walking home alone from the movies when she was jumped and raped by a black man. Stunned, she returned home to her husband Bob, stating she had been raped. Sometime later, she finds she is pregnant. In the beginning she hates the thought of her unborn baby, not wanting a constant reminder of her rapist, but keeps it for a few reasons: she is Catholic and she harbors a small hope that it could be her husband's baby. Her husband is supportive during the pregnancy. As the months pass, Gerry comes to be attached to the baby, later stating "8 months is too long to close your heart to a piece of yourself." She becomes fearful of what will happen if her baby is black, the social isolation it would receive and what people would think of her. After going into labor and confiding in a doctor her situation, she becomes convinced that it would be best if she gave it up. The baby is a black girl. She names her newborn daughter Barbara Anne Cummins and gives her to foster mother Corrine Burrel, a black woman in Roxbury, a black neighborhood. Gerry is heartbroken to give up her daughter.
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, 2h15Directed by Taylor Hackford
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Thriller, Action, Adventure, Crime, Romance
Themes Monde imaginaire, Political films
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Rating62%
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