The Brothers Quay

A character riding a tricycle captures a winged character by using a mysterious table with what looks to be the drawing of a human torso on its surface. Then wraps it in a big yellow cloth before clipping its wings. A number of mysterious things are kept in the drawer of that table, including what may be a beating heart and a much smaller insect. There is also a strange contraption on the wall, looking a little like a square paperclip jutting out from a labyrinth. There also appear to be a number of structures that loosely resemble fire escapes.

A man with one very rapidly fluttering eye seems to be making music with a giant UPS symbol by rubbing a cyst on his forehead. Out of this cyst grows a single hair. The movement of this hair seems vaguely connected to three other hairs growing out of short metal cylinders. The stagy interiors are very light. Lines are drawn, and then curl up off the page before bouncing up a short flight of stairs. Then they turn into a tiny disc, maybe a sphere. Two other figures are in an even more interior, darkened room. One rubs his forehead or pats his torso with his skeletal little hands; another lies in bed. The strings sound like Bartok; the titles resemble the script devised by J.R.R. Tolkien for ‘Lord of the Rings’.

Another figure waits for the trolley. Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he just likes to listen for it. He might even drive it, or maybe that’s another puppet that looks like him. There is an arch, or maybe it’s a cathedral. Music is played on what sounds like a Theremin. Later there is an organ. And strings. There are a series of quotations in four different languages, each in its own separate box. Quotations such as “Beneath vertebrae of metal, so prolonged now – this cold glove over my spine.” The end come with the word “Fin” rushing towards us out of the center of the screen, just like Bunuel.