‘Virile Games’: Jan Švankmajer’s work of bizarre football genius
Soccer. Football. The beautiful game, played as if it were more comparable to an ethereal dance by the greatest to ever grace the international stage, with the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo treating the ball as if it’s their cherished property. Whilst such stalwarts give the game its ‘beautiful’ tagline, others, such as former Sunderland defender Lee Cattermole (to name just one), prefer to hoof the ball like they hate its mere existence, breaking the legs of anyone prancing around the pitch with nifty pirouettes and Cruyff Turns.
This juxtaposition of the violence and elegance of the beautiful game is what, in part, inspires Jan Švankmajer’s surreal 1988 short film Virile Games, a wildly violent joy that feels like a more furiously charged version of Tom & Jerry. Also known as Manly Games in other parts of the world, the short depicts a man (Miroslav Kuchar) watching a local game of Czech football in his apartment, drinking beer, eating sicky beige stew and eating novelty-shaped biscuits.
He switches the TV to soak up the atmosphere, and it quickly becomes a part that this game of football will be unlike the game depicted in Ted Lasso or the nostalgic Goal trilogy, with Švankmajer’s signature stop-motion style quickly coming into play. Moving around the pitch as if elegant paper marionettes, the players dance to the rhythm of the angelic soundtrack before violence abruptly interrupts proceedings.
A pair of saucepan lids are crushed like cymbals onto the face of a claymation footballer: 1-0. A toilet plunger removes a large portion of a midfielder’s face: 2-0. But, here comes the opposition, sadistically taking a pair of scissors to the striker, slicing his clay face like he’s cutting through tofu, taking one goal back.
As the skirmish kicks off a full on-field battle, the adoring fans don’t seem in the least bit disturbed, wildly cheering each death as if everyone was a Puskás award winner. Such violence isn’t tentatively done either, this is violent stuff, with Švankmajer and his team clearly having sadistic fun coming up with the most creative way possible to dismember, destroy and liquidise their clay creations.
Speaking about the violence that pervades the film, Švankmajer gives a poetic point of view, stating: “As Dalí once wrote: ‘Beauty should be edible, or not at all.’ We could incorporate violence into this statement: ‘Violence should be edible, or not at all.’ I’d like to point out that I’m always concerned with the negation of a negation, and that’s not negativity”.
Indeed, it is the violence itself that is the point of the film, with the rather on-the-nose message relating to the tribal attitudes of sports fans and their thirst for victory seemingly no matter the consequences. Its message may smell a little of moral panic, but Virile Games isn’t to be taken as a straight-faced political statement, this is merely a surrealist take on the beautiful game, where the passion, violence and absurdity of the sport are brought to the surface with mesmerising creativity.
