A MOVIE

Then the shock came. I was instantly enchanted by the broken dialogues, stammering eh-s of the starting sequence, the work of the sound engineer following the principles of Rousseau, which, foregoing the sterilised world of post-synchronisation, recorded natural sounds this time. Then, from all this, with unbelievable ease a film unravelled, in which the greatest experience for me was the perfect harmony between old traditions and fresh ideas. This is a harmony composed with technical — or rather conductor-like — accuracy, arising from inside, which cannot be scored on paper, as it is equally impossible to identify, why you would ask for strawberry, chocolate and strachatella in the order you do in the case of a mighty portion of ice-cream.

The story and the environment is entirely contemporary, yet many features related to classical comedies can be detected in the unfolding of the story and the elaboration of the points of jokes. Similarly proportional are the scenes, you nowhere spend more time than necessary. Just like in the old time comedies, you get to numerous (sometime commonly known) places. The camera moves around in an accurate, calculated way, just like in the case of the great forerunners, it is mounted on a dolly, it doesn't stagger. Yet, the style of Sztracsatella cannot be described approaching from the tradition of the Hungarian popular movies. Kern did not revived the film making method of an era, but, feeling our age, he mixed out new colours from the entire toolbox of the narrative film.

If we submerge in the sea of one hundred years of film-making, in the sphere beyond seventy meters we cannot see anything else through our worn-out and scratchy goggles but actors articulating with legs and arms, subsequent evocative colouring and aggressive mounting. When we ascend a bit, we find snatches of meticulously polished sentences in the opalescent water. Not even the most practised film-diver can stand this level for long, his eyes, nostrils, mouth will be stuffed with the wadding of the scripts. A few ten meters above, however, we can't see anything floating. There are meagre dialogue lists hesitating there, like so many fishlets in the ever lighter water body. And, above this, there is only the sunny surface, From the air of this, we can take as deep a breath, as we just can. This pervading odour is our own halitus.

András Kern, the spiritual father of Sztracsatella plays the main role himself, the slightly world-weary composer, who is less and less able to identify himself with the tacts of his transformed homeland. Despite Budapest surrounding him with love, adoring him still. Yet he feels uprooted, as if it wasn't him who conducts things. His family disturbances add to the stretching disharmony in him, so no wonder, that the result is a good little nervous breakdown.

So the self-examination could begin, but through the hero of Kern we don't submerge into some endemic world. Though the author could have the opportunity for exhibitionism. He even uses a few cuts from his 16 mm opus at the college called Mi lesz? (What's now?) (it would be a pity to miss such a nice self-reflecting point), but thanks to his self-restraint this remains a well functioning part of the weaving of the story and depicting the souls, which fits the structure well. What we can see is no mannered, affected soul-chewing. On the contrary, we get a buffetingly plastic image on our weaknesses in our characters, our own everydays and emotional problems.

The effect is not due to the obscenities which seem to be mandatory nowadays, though even these get a strange light in the film.

Together with many, sometime myself am blushed in the dark auditorium, when the actors turn to me with a coarse swearword, even if I know that they play roles. Maybe the matter is just this: I know, that their being upset is pseudo-stress. However, when seeing Sztracsatella I sometime realise dumbfounded, that my tongue gets the glib with them. The situations displayed are so real, that I would say just the same and just at the same time what I can hear from the screen. Be it strange as it is, the well placed lingual obscenity in this film is an important tool. With these few four letter words — which are only exiled from printing, anyway — you are able to hit emotional states with astonishing accuracy.

Beside the spiritual and artistic performance of our forty-eight years old actor however, the success has a number of other preconditions. Our contemporary fairy, Enikõ Eszenyi is unforgettable again, whom we meet as a serious, bespectacled psychiatrist. Her curious fans can even have a look into her mouth to the extent of a tooth-filling. By the way, the camera of Elemér Ragályi scans the well known places of the capital with the eyes of the Pestians, recording sometimes tiny details in their real forms. Among others this is the reason why the film becomes credible and ours. The viewer recognises his/her own environment: ¨Why, this is a place where I had spooning one time myself! Well, this stupid graffiti was not wiped down for the sake of the shooting? This unfortunate beggar indeed used to sit here in the subway!¨ Even in terms of auditive actualities the film will be a distinguished description of the period at the end of the twentieth century, since the commercial radio stations belch up ads every other minute. For us this also tells, that without the financial support of these firms this magnificent, honest film confession could not have been created.

In other words, it is by no accident that I never met someone who would be neutral of this film and would say: ¨So, what shall I say? It's a film.¨ Some praise it lengthily — they are more numerous —, some find a hundred faults in every inch of it. The latter ones don't notice, that they smear their own reflected image. All right, I am also sorry for the plot being squashed between clear cuts for one and a half hour, that Kern doesn't take advantage of wipe, diaphragm and other spicy visual connections. But is it so important? It seems, that still not all of us is able to accept an honest and humorous critique of ourselves, be it full of love as it is.

What else could we say of our life, than our good conductor:
¨Well, what kind of an ice-cream is the stratchatella? Shit! These are such newly rich things, you know.¨