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Yet another member of Sándor Simó's directors' class presents his first full-length
feature film. Besides Ferenc Török (Moscow Square - Moszkva tér), Szabolcs
Hajdu (Sticky Matters - Macerás ügyek), Dávid Erdélyi (Forward! - Előre!)
and Bence Miklauzic (Sleepwalkers - Ébrenjárók), György Pálfi has also come
up with an individual tone. In fact we can safely say that he has created one of the most
special and interesting Hungarian films of recent years. *
Hukkle was produced with the almost exclusive participation of amateur actors
-residents of the location, Ozora. Professional actors (Ági Margitai, Attila Kaszás,
Eszter Ónodi) appear in just the occasional, brief episode. Another unusual trait of this
film is that human speech can only be heard as an incomprehensible background murmur.
During the opening sequence we see the preparations of an incessantly hiccoughing old man
who, taking his bottle of milk, settles on the bench outside his house to observe the life
of the village.
The camera takes everyday actions: men playing skittles by the inn, a man herding his pig
towards the sow, harvesting, pumping water, a shepherdess guarding her flock and an old
woman gathering belladonna. She however makes a potion of the flowers and, pouring it into
small bottles, distributes it among the girls and women who work in the dressmaker's shop.
Guests arrive (the family played by professional actors) and have lunch with the almost
bedridden grandfather who can only eat processed food. The grandmother pours the potion
into grandpa's lunch. What can it be? A popular fortifying remedial substance that will
alleviate the old man's remaining days? The grandchild sitting in the yard gives the
left-over to the dog, from time to time also taking a dip from the processed mush. Next we
see the dog reeling in agony, then dying and the crowd accompanying the small coffin of a
child as it marches past the bench with the continuously hiccoughing old man.
Even without dialogues we can easily guess that poisoning has taken place to which apart
from the redundant husband, others have also fallen victims unintended. But there's no
stopping now: the female members of the village start up a virtual war of extermination
against their husbands and male relatives with the "well-proven method". This is
how the bee-keeper, the owner of the angler's settlement, the father of the district
policeman and the male members of the family of shepherds become victims so that
eventually the "village pig" that has been driven to the sow is wandering on the
streets alone. Despite all these monstrosities the film feels neither depressing nor
horrific. The reason for this lies in the unusual method of portrayal and presentation.
Images of the human world are continuously accompanied by the depiction of nature and the
life of animals and plants. We see shots of brilliant cinematography: a snake twisting in
its borrow, a ladybird resting on a girl's neck, a rabbit hopping about unsuspectingly in
front of a combine harvester, a catfish swallowing a hook, a stork, a mole digging under
the ground and an owl.
The film's remarkable basic idea lies in the very fact that through the grotesque-ironic
allusion to nature films it shows humans merely as two-legged "animals" or
beasts. This is at the same time a snub at nature films whose general problem is the
inability to present the events of the animal world as they actually exist, i.e. without a
moral aspect, solely as the episodes of Darwin's "struggle for life". Watching
with human eyes, one is always sorry for the victims of the predators and it is hard not
to regard the lion's hunt for the antelope as murder. This moral element is further
reinforced by the text and tone of the narrator.
An individual attempt to solve this problem was put forward a few years ago by the
brilliant film entitled Microcosm (subtitle: Le peuple de l'herbe). The creators
show through shots taken with virtuoso photography, without any narration, the life of
small animals - insects, reptiles and amphibians - living in an ordinary field at the edge
of a village. Although there is no lack of anthropomorphisation, emphasis is placed more
on the common fate of living creatures and the kindling of sympathy for the
"smallest" who equally partake in the continuous struggle for life - that
certain destiny of "mice and men".
Learning from all the above, Pálfi and his team have managed to create a way of seeing
and portraying that endeavours to equate the world of man and animals - in this case
through the depiction of a human medium. The aforementioned murders "simply
happen" besides the various events of the village and wildlife. Although of course we
don't consider them of secondary importance, neither do we feel shock or indignation.
Primarily because we cannot observe similar reactions in the characters of the film, not
even the expression of content over the accomplished feat. Most likely not because they
don't have such reactions - though we can find hints at this as well. In the funeral
procession the camera goes close up on the face of professional actors who, in spite of
losing their child or grandson, appear to stare ahead with considerable dispassion, as if
they were only accompanying some distant relative on his last journey.
The police mother adding poison to her husband's spritzer also retires calmly with her son
to watch a soap opera. The scene is literally talkative: this is the first time we hear
human speech, from the TV, in the form of the stereotype dialogue of lovers. It's as if
these people (and together with them us too), no longer able to understand each other, can
only comprehend the words of the "magic box". If on the other hand this is not
the case, and the people are capable of human reactions, we viewers get no chance to
witness this, because it isn't portrayed, shown or made visible.
People are deprived in this film of language, the most important communicational tool. As
they cannot talk things over, the events themselves are also unable to become part of the
moral world. Yet the morality and ethics of human existence is rooted expressly in the
opportunity of reflection. The sole means for this is spoken language which is at the same
time the instrument of exact human thought and through it communication. Of course aside
from the spoken language we are also in possession of metacommunicational tools (for
example gestures). However, these kinds of signals are equally absent from the film
because it's not that these people are unable to talk, but that they simply refrain from
talking in our presence and expressions of language reach us only in the form of an
incomprehensible buzz or background noise. That is, instead of human speech the rhythmic
"symphony" of various sounds provides the film's resonant world, whose basic
opening rhythm is the old man's hiccoughing.
This also contributes to the approaching of the human world to animals, to their blending
and merging, as if everything were happening to the rhythm of nature's eternal cycle. As
if female spiders were devouring the redundant males.
This "muteness" also evokes the obscurity of ballads together with their
elliptic technique. For the lack of emotional reaction could also be due to the fact that
the women have joined forces against their husbands and as the destruction is a common
issue, the silence is also collective. This is what the policeman - the only
representative of law and morals based on human reason and rationalism - realizes with the
help of a photograph. Whether he discloses the women's secret or not isn't revealed
however. In the last scene we see him sitting alone at a wedding feast, listening to the
women's choir and the song of a little girl. This folk song is the second and last clearly
comprehensible human articulation in the film. The song essentially provides justification
for the women's deed. It conveys an ancient, archaic, so to speak natural wisdom about
life and its simplest truth. For it is true that we keep killing those who are weaker than
us, if not physically, but hurting and poisoning them gradually with words and actions
alike.
We humans are merely wild beasts just like the predators of nature films - as the film
implies. We are part of the great, indifferent cycle whose rhythm is relayed by the
hiccoughing of the old man who, having seen enough, retires at the end of the day from his
bench into the house. His hiccoughing can be heard for a long time afterwards.
Among the film-making elite several people - for example Peter Greenaway or in Hungary
Miklós Jancsó - urge the development of films that, despite relying solely on visual
means, are also in possession of a "message" and their breakaway from a literary
approach. This is what Pálfi and his team are experimenting with and have managed to
succeed in creating a consistent variant. The question is whether this path can be
continued or whether Hukkle remains merely something one-off and unique. Let's
hope that they will soon be giving us either a positive or negative answer with their next
film and that their talent and future career won't fall victim to the difficult conditions
of Hungarian film-making.
The film's official website is:Hukkle
(* This article had been written before the 35th
Hungarian Film Week where Ferenc Török, Szabolcs Hajdu and Gábor Fischer - members of
the Madzag Association founded by pupils in Sándo Simó class at the Academy of Drama and
Film - presented their new full-lenght feature films - the editor)
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