Four wretched fellows set forth to take their chance, and the new cinematic trend snatches them. The four young, vagrant heroes of Black Brush, (Zoli, a student of theology; Anti, the poet; Döfi, the painter and Papi) try to make a living as chimney-sweepers, but they accumulate fiasco on failure. While trying to escape from their boss they build up more and more debt getting into adventures beyond all probability between two sessions of boredom. The beggarliness of these adventures is the source of absurd humour undertaken with just a little bit too much pride by the two inspiration masters, Roland Vranik and Gergely Pohárnok. As the story unfolds there is a parade of such exciting characters of the Hungarian ‘scene’ like the imperfectly technocratic stuff of a denominational school, the young life-style reformers of the Krisna-center, or take the infallible dealer, who does sales goat droppings, and who might be seen as an iconic figure of our century. The goat of the dealer is responsible for coherence in the story, having swallowed the lads’ last prospect to get rid of their dead-end situation: Zoli’s drivers’ licence, a direct hit winner lottery ticket and the keys of the stolen car which could help fleeing. According to the tradition of cinematic absurdity and nihilism there’s no way to solve such a situation, not even the improvised gastrotomy on the abandoned private property can bring a happy-end. We wave good-bye to the four chimney-sweepers in the same state as we have first encountered them. Now they are actually pondering over the running speed of the Danube.

The portrait of the loggerheaded animal (the goat) and Gergely Bánki’s on the film-poster is the apotheosis of Absurdity itself. The acting of the other three chimney-sweepers (Károly Hajduk, Csaba Hernádi and András Réthelyi) is decently amusing especially for its unreflected imbecility. ’Absurd’ is the catchphrase, but in this manner the film’s humour is more traditional than a novelty. It’s more fashionable than genuine. The common ideas of Roland Vranik (author of his first feature film; otherwise a director of commercials) and Gergely Pohárnok (who is the director of photography in the Black Brush) stick out from behind the curtains unelaborated, remain in the form as they were first thought out. Black Brush works with a well camouflaged dramaturgical autocracy, it hopes to make invisible the lack of continuity between ideas and gags under the veil of absurd. It is but a splendid tableau, not more than a loose string of punch line that makes an impression of coherence with the character of the goat functioning primarily as a catalyst. The skilfully found and neatly exploited little motif is the clue to the successful marketing of the film. To enter the main screening hall of the Toldi cinema, for instance, people must step on the silhouette of a goat, and similarly the web-site of the film also uses the goat motif: it appears in varied red and black. Unfortunately the goat was turned into the motor of the film, the main dramaturgical key as well, but the poor little animal really seems to underperform such a task. The minor characters line up around the figure of the goat, they introduce themselves in succession without having any real part in the plot, which hardly presents itself due to some prevailing and misunderstood trend of our days. If we do not hold too much rigour, the goat is enough, but in this case the undertaking should also be judged in more modest ways. The film should be seen as a mostly entertaining yet shallow design-movie.

In one of his interviews, the director spoke about harsh editing and also mentioned that he had choosing the shortest among the numerous versions. These words indicate that there might have been a larger scale project and that there were always two different concepts regarding the length of the film. Naturally, the director sympathized with the longer version, in which the surplus – according to Vranik – was not just more sudden turns in the story, but the increase of absurdity up to the extreme point of the „no-(intelligible)-event-is-going-on experience”. Through fully subordinating time to absurdity it could have entered fully into the spirit of tensionlessness. To the delight of his fellow author, producer and the cinemagoer, a somewhat audience-friendly version made it to the cinemas, where the same basic stroke of genius makes itself questionable in 80 minutes. This artificial story is based on the impertinent idea of the „what’s-up-if-there-is-nothing-(intelligible)-at-all”. It could be reasonable, even have its own legitimacy, if it was more than a fashion film, an imitation, had it not misconceived an otherwise relevant thought. But it did, and to the full extent I must add.

Although many critics have been tempted by a formal comparison, this is a misconception, (having its consequences in the difference of level), the Black Brush is not comparable with the related, many times mentioned Little Valentino (A kis Valentinó, 1979) directed by András Jeles. Little Valentino is also a story of twenty-four hours with hardly any events from a dramaturgical point of view. We are witnessing long scenes that bring no turning points at all. They just keep up with each other in the run of time. Otherwise they are going over each other almost stagnating. Conformity with reality is an ontological correspondence in Jeles’s film. The authenticity of the film is provided by its dramatic strength. The reason of showing certain conditions is justified by this dramatic force. It’s not about hooked up social redundancy or the playful freezing of time. These powerful thoughts actually called forth a new cinematic language in Jeles’s case, which constitute the notion of courage in both experimental and esthetical-political terms. The Black Brush is also mentioned within the context of bravery and experimentation by its authors and a few biased critics. Apart from the presumed originality of cinematography, they would probably refer to such undeveloped ideas like the goat’s dream on the cabbage plantation, which sets out in an exciting manner, but fades away shortly after.

By reason of a number of analogies, one might attempt to compare the film to Sugar Blue (Cukorkékség, made by Attila Hazai and Gergely Pohárnok in 1999), or to No Girl Ever Thrilled Me So (Rám csaj még nem volt ilyen hatással,1994), by Péter Reich. All the four films are wildings of an underground culture. They are properly films intended for a specific segment of the audience. Experimentalism in cinematic language is a common trait in them (declared in the case of Black Brush), which is (with the exception of the film created by Jeles), most often contented with the means of minimalism. In spite of apparent similarities, the differences are more fundamental indeed. The three films preceding Black Brush handle nothingness/nihilism as their immanent part. They are identical to nothingness/nihilism and they are depressing accordingly. Black Brush is an amusing (or a boring) movie. Its nothingness/nihilism is just idiosyncrasy and visual design. It intermediates a lack of spirit through its fashionable images and not that aimed originality of the cinematic language that the filmmakers claim to have achieved through the unity of form and matter. The black and white minimalism cinematography (the film is in black and white) could be the visual equivalent of futility and absurdity, but the camera movement with ’no funds’ turns representation of nothingness/nihilism into mannerism. The geometrical arrangement of the youngsters smoking dried goat dung of on the roof; the emptiness of the stable at the Krishna-centre; the student of theology in front of a white wall broken by a cross when he returns to his one time mentor; the making fun of a petty bourgeois couple solving a crossword puzzle in a high-angle shot; all these are remarkably spectacular and extremely commonplace choices.

The spontaneity of the two earlier films (those made in the 1990’s) cannot be traced in the Black Brush at all. Their relationship to reality is elementary, and whenever they divert from it, a comparison can already be made. This doesn’t refer to the fiction. It’s about the approach the films take, their views of the world, which is made evident in the way they relate to cinematography: after all we are talking about a visual genre. The images of No Girl Ever Thrilled Me So are unsophisticated, amateur shots with occasional and rather alienating long shots. Sugar Blue uses a handheld camera. There is no modesty or humbleness in the minimalist form of Black Brush. It tries to ’sell out’ many things invented and produced by someone else. No offence, but Black Brush has much more to do with the film entitled Season (Szezon) made by Ferenc Török, who had experimented with light existentialism but finally ended up in an existentially insignificant, though visually acknowledgeable film.

Jeles (or the two other directors, not to mention Béla Tarr) managed to find the ontological link in their films with quite similar filmic devices and without effort, but Ferenc Török did not. In his case it was a process controlled from outside. It might have been difficult for him to bring together his goals with audience-friendly effects, devices and length, just as with coming up a basic idea which underestimates the public. Season and Black Brush are related to each other in their directorial intention that inevitably goes together with naivety, that is in their well misunderstood existentialism incompatible (or seemingly incompatible) with „light genres”. This manifests itself in the real time filled with boredom in the case of the Season. Boredom has not been represented in a compressed form, but played down instead. Its goal was to ostensively prove that portraying boredom is not always boring, or if it is, we deserve it. Besides this, minimalist cinematography is destined to illustrate the director’s intentions in the case of the Black Brush. Things should not only be, but also look empty. Nothing is at stake in these films, however they do not address this condition, but make it visible through an opportunist practice of dramaturgy. Hungarian film has surpassed the stage where a real time non-event is the only stunt it can pull off. But even that would be acceptable in case it had a point to make.

The tradition of representing this nothingness or nihilism – as rooted in the seventies’ history and still effective in contemporary reality – is an indisputable feature of Hungarian cinema. On the other hand, the films artistic quality seems to be interconnected with their production date. (No Girl Ever Thrilled Me So and Sugar Blue are partly nostalgic play-offs of the earlier versions of „the present day Hungarian”.) Their mannerism grows proportionally with the passing of time. There still is some shocking self-evidence in Péter Reich’s and Hazai’s film, even in its use of humour. The minimalist disposition is not yet superficiality in Sugar Blue. Something happens there, but this same thing – even as afar as jokes are concerned – is missing from the films of Roland Vranik and Ferenc Török’. Something is represented by apparently similar devices. Its possible contents are not detected through the form. Although Pohárnok is responsible for the cinematography of both Sugar Blue and Black Brush, his images in the former are more loose and in an elementary relationship with contents, depicting worlds (existing somewhere or for someone) in a more authentic manner. Here the film mimics amateurship even as far as form is regarded. Amateur events harmonise with the amateur images (and amateur actors). The filmmakers using of literature is not, for itself, a virtue. Yet, in case of Sugar Blue it works well: there’s text and there’s material. The Black Brush has no raw material at all. It has nothing to say, it only shares one or two observations.

According to the director, he and Pohárnok did not intend to write a social drama. I by no means find wanting their lack of social sensitivity in the Black Brush since in its own manner this is even manifested in the film, most successfully in the cartoon-like nature of the characters playing utility roles. This is the strength of the Black Brush. The leading role belongs to well emphasised features instead of elaborated characters or personalities. There are prototypes on screen, but in unique rather than in everyday situations, (and that is the source of the absurd itself). The most powerful moments of the film are those when absurdity rises to the highest pitch. Such is the images of life on the housing estate: the aggressive, fundamentalist Hungarian, whose flat is soaked regularly by the neighbour living above, who is nevertheless held at bay by his drum&base fetishist gawk son and television addict daughter. The list could go on: the disillusioned and over-intellectualized paintress for whom Papi (Dady) is too sentimental; the lonesome Krishna-girl who sticks to the sect; the team addict Krishna-boy who entered into the French Foreign Legion by engagement; the doctor making a show of his historical knowledge. One can clearly see that despite the variety of these characters they were chosen among narrow frameworks. Behind the sometimes sensitive portraying of these typically paradoxical characters one can sense the social security of the people making the jokes. As if the scriptwriters only created them to entertain themselves.

There are too few gags in Black Brush to become a free comedy with no stakes. To be avant-garde, it has not got the necessary courage. It’s obviously unfair to keep comparing the film to other cinematic works, (though the urge is not by accident). It has its own merits too, such as the characters mentioned above who crop up for our mere admiration, since they do not occupy a position of their own within the story. Yet, the ambitious cinematography (the beautiful but fake camera movements, for which Gergely Pohárnok was awarded by the Film Feast jury), or the authors’ enthusiasm that comes through even in the completed work, and finally the two laughters during those eighty minutes, all these make me more forgiving towards Black Brush.

(Translated by Gábor Kis)