Dezső Zsigmond is the director of rural Hungary. As István Szabó sticks to the metropolis, so does he stick to the farm, the village, the rural town as the source of inspiration and an life-giving medium of his films. He is not attracted by the landscape only, although the woods and the edge of the village play an impressive role in his films, but also by the people of the country, whom he keeps returning to in the films he made. The fate of village people and farmers has always excited him, since history, politics trampled over them, and the poor environment lacking stimulus and intimacy can hardly protect them from misfortunes, less than the victims trying to find shelter in the labyrinth of a big city. Deranged fates, distorted souls, lonely fools, helpless idiots play the part in the films Stőhr builds up. His two latest films, Bizarre Romance , shown at last years' Film Week, and this year's Memories of The House (Hetedíziglen), that appeared on the repertoire of Uránia Cinema almost at the same time, fit perfectly into this depressing line. But the direct influence of politics was pushed to the back and at the same time in Zsigmond's films - particularly in Memories of The House - a strong shift can be observed from the description of the man-in-the-street at the social-historical level towards the mythical-metaphysical interpretation of fate.
The hero of Bizarre Romance is the fool of the village. This figure is not new in Zsigmond's career, since a similar character stands in the focus of his film made in co-operation with János Erdélyi, Indian Winter. In the debuting piece born during the political changes the figure played by Károly Eperjes consciously chooses the fool-of-the-village role playing an Indian, since through it he can express his outsider position, that he does not intend to participate in a lying, repressive system that deprived him of his family identity, while in Bizarre Romance Jóska is mentally retarded, and he has to struggle with his disability all his life. Of course, Zsigmond does not select fools to be the characters in his films with psycho-pathological purposes, but because the fool is an effective dramaturgic tool to make statements of the state of the world indirectly. At the same time Zsigmond does not use the figure as Shakespeare did in his dramas, where the fool, hiding behind the mask of foolishness, can reveal the truth which is intentionally concealed by the representatives of the power in a humorous way, but in his films the fool acts like a sponge, absorbing the distortions and idiotism of the environment. Jóska is definitely retarded, but who does not have a mental disorder among the farming characters of Bizarre Romance? The whole farm world is floating in the steam of alcohol. Physical and spiritual wrecks waste their last coins in the local pub, the only communal place of the village. There are no normal human relations, only alcohol buddies and copulating couples. Old spouses steal from each other to buy some booze, and the house of Lajos (Lajos Kovács), who fell ill because of alcoholism, is robbed by their mates during his hospitalisation, and when the patient returns home, in his helpless rage, he does not punish the thieves, but his lover - who is supporting him - by riding her with machismo, and I could continue the list, but it is unnecessary: this is the Hungarian village here, as we know it from Sátántangó and Portugal in the 1990es. The fool does not appear strange in front of that hellish background - as if we opposed him with the world of normality -, but thickens into the quintessence of loneliness, brutality, inability to express themselves and self-destruction that characterise this village world, in which people drag along without jobs and future.
The fool does not only collect and intensify the idiotism of the environment, but represents this world optically, since we see everything through his eyes. Although there are not too many images that correspond to Jóska's subjective point of view, the distortedness of the visual images of the film is also accounted to him. Jóska's staggering, clumsy, stumbling run is reflected by unpredicted manual photography and sudden cuts, while the permanent drunkenness in the constant usage of wide-angle optics. The crazy and tormented visual style created by photographer Gábor Halász becomes a central element of the grotesque description of conditions in Bizarre Romance.
The village sinking into animal-like scrape-along and chronic alcoholism is too well known from reality and contemporary Hungarian films not to make the film rather tiring, in spite of the tense and uniform atmosphere. The plot of the film begins after a longish preparation, after which the film got the title Rural Decameron. The poor soul, who does not have a chance even among tired and over-burdened village women to find a wife or lover for himself - so in his agony he covers the donkey -, is unlucky enough to fall in love with the pretty, blond saleswoman of the local grocery. Who knows, though, what this man - incapable of reflection and self-reflection - might feel, and whether we may call love the attraction of a retarded man towards a beautiful woman. Nevertheless, Zsigmond suggests by several directoral tools that Jóska is not simply driven by sexual instincts, but also by his desire for the values embodied by the woman. Such a dramaturgic tool is when every day Jóska asks for a candy to his usual sausage portion, which he carefully preserves, as it later turns out, counting his days of love. Another, more direct and simple tool is when Jóska begins to follows the woman riding a bike, and the revelling music is replaced by a sentimental tune. There is quite a lot of irony hidden in this impossible love, which is rather human in the inhumanity. Love becomes the metonymy of longing for another, better world.
This characteristic duality of love, the clash of the bleakly ordinary world with another one full of values has been present in the film since the appearance of the saleswoman. This woman is beauty itself in the vegetation ruling among ruins. It is not an exaggeration to say that she shines out of the constantly overcast, dull greyness: in the first grand total of her, the warm light softens the pretty, but otherwise rather plain female face into something fabulous and sensual. Regardless of the light, her face a "normal" face among the unshaven, winkled, bald and matted heads signalling value in themselves, and is an important message, taking the signal system of the film into consideration. The other female character in the film with erotic appeal, Lajos's lover does not deserve a single proper close-up (in one of the half totals, her full, uncovered breasts dominate, while her face remains in the shadow), her mature, sensuous body gets stuck in the environment saturated by animal and human stink as an image, too. We can see the saleswoman making love to the elegant, grey-haired businessman twice, but the emphasis of these scenes - directed to be more attractive than the other love scenes - is not on describing brutality, but rather the reason (pointing beyond the mere ecstasy) why the woman sleeps with the man. The saleswoman that stands out of her environment is seduced by the owner of a company producing rubber dolls, promising her to be the model of one of the prototypes. These rather important dialogues - in an unlucky way - overload the sex scenes, which fail to reveal anything about the relationship between the two people. We fail to learn during the intercourse or on any other occasion why one of the key characters of the film, the saleswoman, decided to sleep with the entrepreneur: was it love, pure enjoyment or perhaps the desire to become rich or her hope to escape from the village?
Hearing the dialogue, we can suspect that it has to do with the escape from the village, although the obscurity here leads rather to alienating confusion than to beneficial ambiguity. Either this way or another, it becomes clear that the retarded will not have a place between the two lovers, apart from peeping. Jóska's love story might as well end here, but halfway through the film - which crawls along rather slowly despite the fast cuts - suddenly a miraculous turn takes peace: the fool, who completely lost hope, watching the love-making couple, finds the rubber doll manufacturing plant, which is like a magic palace with its red lamps, hanging rubber dolls, cold lights and laboratory like sterility. The creation of the rubber doll, as it emerges from the red light, has supernatural effect. The floatable rubber doll refers to the tangible presence of the existence of another world, although this other world is not that of the refined values, such as love, but the post-modern consumer society, symbolised by disposable plastic love. The presence of the rubber doll and the plant imports into the film the humour - so typical of Kusturica's films - originating from the collage mixture of the hypermodern and worthless. The scenery and the props so far have precisely corresponded to human behaviour patterns. They have suggested the same neglected, deteriorated world, ruinous farm building, disorder, and dirt everywhere: poultry on the bed, goose in the doorless yard-toilet, piglet drawn out of the plastic bag, age old wall tapestry, spinach green wellington boots, torn quilted jacket, colourful acrylic pullover, leather cap with a visor and a grey barrette - the objects of poverty in the village. Beside this shattered traditional village environment, the rubber plant symbolising the western society seems to be from another planet with its machines, lights and the owner. And as Jóska marches along this coherent world of objects with the floatable rubber doll in his hands, it looks just as grotesque as if he was walking along hand in hand with the saleswoman.
One of the reasons why Zsigmond needs the fool, as a main character is because he can transfer his emotions for the real woman onto the plastic puppet (which is signalled by the love theme again). What makes the romance really bizarre is that Jóska does not use the rubber doll as a sexual accessory, but as a love partner: he caresses and embraces it, what is more, he even beats it, if necessary. In learning how to conflict parents, how to treat with a lover and a sexual partner, how to become a mature adult, frighteningly, the man is not helped by a real, flesh and blood woman of the community, but an "imported" article. This grotesque love is the criticism of traditional community sunk into idiotism and the alienated post-modern world. Solidarity does not operate among the members of the traditional community anymore, and does not exist between the rich and the poor (and perhaps never will). The western type of consumer society taking shape in Hungary is willing to help "natives" stuck in other levels of civilisation only with useless knick-knacks, and in return they (just like in Istenek a fejükre estek) can look upon all that they received from the glamorously rich West as an idol. Here, the clever criticism of cultural colonisation is formulated, without being too pushy.
Jóska and the rubber doll - a title promising a burlesque. József Szarvas is really excellent when holding the puppet: he takes it everywhere under his arm; when it is in his way, he deflates and hides it in his coat, at night he tries to inflate it, but his parents catch him, so he hides it in the well and disguise it with different pieces of garbage. If József Szarvas had not been fooling around with it for about an hour earlier, it would definitely be highly amusing to see what he is doing. But Zsigmond developed his short feature film idea into a whole-evening film, making it heavier for the viewer. The complicated explanation of the conditions of the village (of Hungary?) could be left out of the film, as well as the ending meant to be tragic. It is a common place that every idyll is fragile, no matter how grotesque it is. His fellow pubgoers take the rubber doll from Jóska, rape it and symbolically kill it. It is also a dramaturgic routine solution for the weak man to take revenge on someone even weaker for losing his happiness. The first victim of the fool is the saleswoman riding through the woods alone on her bike, whom he gets down and while trying to transfer his love for the rubber doll onto the living human being, intentionally or by accident, he kills her. He then carries the dead body to the priest's house and sets it on fire, killing another person who was quite good to him. We should not try to look for motivation, since the hero is soft-headed, and is ready for anything. The film ends with the fall back to intellectual and moral infantilism: among the blighted ruins the man is searching for something, and foolishly glad, when he finds the cuckoo clock, the only object to survive the fire, which he can exchange for two drinks in the pub. The film gets from grotesque to tragic leaving the viewer behind. The heart-piercingly comic burlesque could have hit harder than this story ending in tragedy.
Memories of the House is not embedded in an exact political and social environment as Dezső Zsigmond's earlier films, but has stronger mythic overtones. The director's latest film follows the vicissitudes of a small-town family in the 20th century, but as opposed to recently shown Hungarian sagas (Glamour, Sunshine, Chacho Rom), it gives only insignificant role to historical events. The tragedy of the family is not caused by the outside world, political repression, war or persecution, but exclusively internal reasons lead to their destruction. The film, subtitled Seventh, aims to depict the fate of the family as cursed, but the mythical power of the original sin is missing, which would make it all credible. The original sin is the father's sin, who left his family for a young actress (Eszter Nagy-Kálózy), then later he returned and set the coffin plant he owned on fire to get the insurance money. Due to this irresponsible act, one of her daughters died, the other one, the main character Valika (Mari Nagy) almost died and their house nearly burnt down, too. The burden of the original sin should be carried by the arson recurring in Valika's nightmares. The rather more ridiculous than frightening visual realisation may also play a part in the fact that I cannot compare the deed of the father depicted as an evil figure to the horrible crimes of the Greek myths.
According to the plot, the original sin carries new misfortunes with it. The mother had to send the children to orphanage, until she managed to save enough money, which caused another break in the emotionally staggered family. The following tragedy is Mókica's paralysis, which is strongly connected to the quarrel between the three sisters, approaching the age of getting married. Of course, the reason for the conflict is that all of them are in love with the same man. The doctor even generates the tension, because while he is courting Sárika (Andrea Söptei), he is kissing Mókica's sick feet. The rather plain-looking Valika witnesses the scene by accident and immediately drinks acid in her sorrow. Now comes an extremely low standard scene in which the doctor, suffering from bad conscious proposes to Sárika, while resuscitating Valika. The fight goes on between the two girls remained at home: Mókica is tied to the bed and in jealousy, she scares away Valika's only timid courtier, Guszti (Ádám Rajhona), then commits suicide in her incurable sadness. Another misfortune hits the family: Zoltán, who is rarely mentioned in the film, once decides to leave (when and why, is a mystery) and never turns up again. His dramaturgic function is obviously to signal that the only way to escape from the house is never to look back. The house gradually grows into a mythical place in the film, since it cannot be left. When Valika is explaining to the little boy who is who in the childhood pictures, she always emphasises who has gone and who has not. Sárika's mysterious disease is also a mythical illness connected to the house: it all started when she married the doctor, as if it was caused by the feeling of guilt to leave her home. Finally this direct symbol is topped by Mókica's outburst, who ragingly lists how many problems the house caused to them and they still stick to it. And of course, the paralysed woman is right, since the house in the end buries the two healthy sisters, too. After the father, living far away, committed suicide, the mother and Sárika also died, but Bandi and Valika are still unable to move out of their home. The two lonely old people torture each other for decades. Bandi tortures Valika by still being jealous of shyly courting Guszti. Eventually, they also die, and the house is inherited by a distant relative.
The film begins with this man remembering. He comes to town for the funerals and to take possession of the scene, the house where he spent his childhood summer holidays. His role is not more than the dramaturgic tools needed for starting the flow of memories, but the scenes attached to him, the images of the funeral and walking in the deserted house are extremely long and sentimental for upbeat. Luckily, the plot drifts away the contemporary recaller. Dezső Zsigmond's film, similar to 25 Tűzoltó Street, is edited in a way to show the past not from the angle of a single character, but from the collective memory of the house that also has a word. Instead of the man, the former little boy's experiences and dreams come alive, then we can see the long gone events from Valika's viewpoint, but for a scene or two even she passes on the role of the recaller to the others, the mother, Mókica, Sárika. The greatest merit of Memories of the House is that it draws the history of a family stepping backwards in the past of slowly revealing secret.
Nevertheless, the inventive structure could not be filled with life. Apart from the clever portions of past secrets, only the petty quarrels and clumsy romance of the three old women were really elaborated by the scriptwriters. The clumsy couple of Mari Nagy and Ádám Rajhona can co-operate excellently and also won the Best Female and Best Male Character award at this year's Film Week. Their clumsy and soft gestures towards each other are nice: sitting at the table, Rajhona is holding Mari Nagy's tiny hands in his huge palms, or when the woman manages to keep the drunk man in the house, what is more, she even tempts him into bed, but Rajhona hides under the duvet ashamed, holding his hand out from below. Meanwhile, György Barkó, playing Bandi, is arguing rather forcefully with the not at all young couple: he becomes hysterical over the sponge cake served for dinner, pours the brandy tight-fistedly and with the expression on his face would prefer to chase away the scared courtier sipping from the precious liquid. In the other scenes, where the performers could not put the situation right, the over-emphasised dialogues sound too theatrical. The deepest point of the film is the childhood scenes, dominated by the ineptly directed children and Anna Nagy speaking in her typical, crying voice, performing in her well-known tragic manner. The quarrels of the three sisters in their childhood are non the better. These scenes are played by Éva Botos, as Mókica, with theatrical enthusiasm, and Mari Nagy cannot persuade us to believe that she is an immature teenager. What perhaps could exempt the performers is that they have to hold on in badly composed situations full of old-fashioned phrases. How could anybody work against trite dramaturgic ideas, such as Valika's floor scrubbing full of the feeling of guilt? Not even the experienced and humble Mari Nagy was able to transform the frenzy of scrubbing, the endlessly long illness and dying to look and feel shocking.
The low budget movie was shot in Mari Jászai Theatre of Tatabánya, which did not encourage acting in the natural way. The tightness of financial resources could be felt all along the movie. The scenery obtained from different places seems to be all right, but the sterile video image and the poor sound wings cannot hide that in fact what we see is a cheep television play. The supposedly hastily recorded shots are almost impossible to watch. The scenes are not properly divided, so unexpected jumps are created in the viewpoint and lighting of frames cut after one another. The video is unable to provide quality to the dream scenes that are dramaturgically of great importance, with the exception of Mókica's suicide, in which the yellow coloured, slightly burned frames, the electronically pulled motion and the opera aria accompanying the images radiate lyrical atmosphere mixed with grotesque.
In the past two years Dezső Zsigmond has made two movies totally different in spirituality and style, both of which proved to be fiascos. The witty idea of Bizarre Romance does not fit for the length of the feature film, but it gives the viewers the impression of a well-composed movie as regards the realisation, the acting of professional and amateur performers, the scenery and costume, the photographer's performance and editing. The undoubtedly large-scale concept of Memories of the House, however, could not be cast in a worthy form either during script writing, or shooting, except for some luckier parts. It is a pity, because the capital-centred Hungarian film-art extremely lacks sensitive reports on rural Hungary. To be there, to see it, to experience it, then transform it into a plot and images we need the obsessed and the fools of the village.
Translated by Adrea Danyi
