András Csejdy
Exciting Times, Blank Screens
The silly season is, for the press, traditionally the summer months,
in which nothing of importance happens in the
life of a community. For Hungarian film-making, the entire year of 1997
qualifies as a silly season--or almost. Now in the last month of the year
we can see better that, as we approach the millennium, any resolution of
the crisis in Hungarian film-making remains as distant as ever.
The facts are well known. While the cinema remains profitable, with
multinationals putting a great deal of money into new gigantic cineplexes,
and while the big international hits and attendances for independent or
semi-independent masterpieces and cult films show that Hungarian viewers
are no different to their counterparts elsewhere, what Hungarian filmmakers
offer has left mass audiences cold for years now. Some figures for the
last financial year, most characteristically on Stracciatella, a much-touted
film by the popular actor and director, András Kern, and which was
given all the publicity in the world, bear this out. A mere 140,000 actually
bought tickets to see the film, albeit the profession as a whole gave its
public backing and even Postabank mobilized its own formidable contacts,
to achieve maximum exposure in the print and electronic media the bank
owns--a Hungarian specialty. The interest generated, however, soon subsided
and the film played to half-full houses. Eventually the state television
gave it the coup-de-grâce by broadcasting it about a year ago.
True, the discouraging statistics are counterbalanced by some successes
on the festival circuit, and complaints were aired and responsibility denied.
Yet there is one thing we cannot afford to do, and that is to fail to draw
the conclusions from all this, as these are crucial for the entire profession.
Many have openly criticized the situation. Some deplore the high number
of films made, others claim the seniors ought to give way to the champions
of the future, others again point out that in the dire economic circumstances
support should be given exclusively either to reliable artists whose work
is in demand, or will stand the test of time, or to promising beginners.
To compare the rewards of a celebrated artist or a media star to those
of teachers is as demagogic as is to couple the closure of hospital wards
with the cost of works of the high arts. It is passé to expect social
justice or cultural profitability from sovereign artists, just as it is
asinine to use economic indicators when examining the productivity and
significance of the arts. Yet, at the risk of gross simplification, we
have to face the fact that artistic quality must somehow be measured, and
in the welcome absence of totalitarian aesthetics we are left nothing more
suitable to do this than the market.
The market, which is manipulated, neutral or even largely hostile to
values, is also complex and flexible, antidemocratic and asocial. As long
as the transition period continues to drag on and the scarcity of effective
demand seems to be becoming permanent, it is cynical to expect self-regulation
from the cultural market. There is a need, therefore, for budgetary support
for the arts, and taxpayers rightly expect the state, which handles their
money, to defend and nurture the work of those who meet minority demands,
at the same time as respecting the freedom of agents on the entrepreneurial
scene. Otherwise the entire edifice will come tumbling down, the structure
of education, shaky as it is, will collapse, and Hungarian film-making
may even come to an end.
Facts and contradictions such as these have presented themselves even
more explicitly this year than ever before.
By way of a working hypothesis, let us point out that while not subscribing
to generation theories, the younger generations, more than any others,
are expected to make films which do depart, in their choice of subject,
their use of cinematographic idiom and their creative attitudes, from what
is customary in Hungarian film-making. If anyone at all, they may indeed
notice that we Hungarians, as we lurch through these political and economic
changes, live in a highly interesting part of the world, and our everyday,
however abominable it is, is very complex and replete with excitement.
The many extraordinary cases and turns of fate should prove a gold mine
for artists. If film-makers and scriptwriters were to make a creative selec
tion, and dramaturgs to clothe the elements of an exciting reality in a
modern form, the editing suites would surely be putting out films which
would surely capture the interest of the audiences. Such open attitudes
are, however, hardly ever found in the work of noted or tyro feature film-makers
and very rarely in documentary film-makers.
So then, do film artists have an idea of the world we live in, do they
want to tell us something, do they have the drive to share their stories
with us and disclose what they think of human relationships, dramatic situations,
historical turns, social pitfalls, emotions, passions, typical and eccentric
figures? Do they have a vision at all? Based on what we saw at the last
national film week in February 1997, the answers to these questions were
all negative. And this is the point as regards the crisis in the profession,
and everyone involved has his or her share of the failure.
We have not heard yet of anyone committed to this reality here, of
ambitious, talented, unknown people and brave attempts. We have not seen
a Hungarian Tarantino, Almodovar or Boyle; we do not know where the Hungarian
Kassowitz lives, or what audiences will be able to scrape off the heavy
make-up on the face of Hun garian film industry, much in the way that those
who produced the nouvelle vague did on academic tastes. We hardly have
any idea as
to who is capable of addressing Hun garian teen agers, or who can write
dialogue on life on the housing estates, or who can draw an authentic picture
of us, of the new-sprung small and large entrepreneurs, managers, billionaires,
yuppies, mafiosos, com mun ists repainted as capitalists, and other fascinating
figures--about us and for us.
I wish those who have so far attempted this had practised self-restraint.
Árpád Sopsits, for one, in his third film Lost Leading
Man (Derenõ]), aims to tell the story of a quest in present-day
Hun gary, for a fugitive, invisible, Christ-like superhero who admits to
a murder his lover committed--a genuine superstar, homo moralis and Übermensch,
too good to be true. Pál Erdõss also opts for a pseudo crime
story in his Last Seen Wearing a Blue Skirt (Gyilkos kedv), a case straight
from a tabloid, about Turkish or Serb truck drivers who kidnap a teenager,
rape her and set her to work as a prostitute all over the country--a xenophobic
film, if ever there was one. After this film, the topic will not be tackled
in the Carpathian Basin for a long time, no matter how much the world press
picks up the name of András Pándy, paedophile, psychopath
and incestuous Hungarian-Belgian Calvinist pseudo-pastor, and no matter
how many child pornographic film rings have been exposed. At least as false
and unbased on reality is the story of a training centre for gladiators,
a tourist bait functioning
in a skanzen-like environment, in Ádám Rozgonyi's television
film Stable (Istálló). Refugees hide in the dark of the stable,
a black man without residence papers, a kind-hearted fugitive from a state
orphanage, a Gipsy who has got something to hide, and a déclassé
misfit. When Zsolt Balogh's The Szelíd Brothers (Szelídek)
opens, one can believe at least there is someone with an idea what it is
like to be a teenager outsider, what it all comes to when three teenage
brothers grow up on videos. They recite Brando's lines from The Godfather,
and when their mother is killed in a street in Budapest before their eyes,
by thugs driving a Mercedes, they sell off everything they own and wander
around the country. But in the end no perspective on the country is provided,
for the structure is shaky, the narrative limp, and the imagery is no more
than the Euro-metal clips that the Viva Music channel, a Ger man MTV wannabe,
puts out.
Stories about the turbulent past, by Sándor Sára, Lívia
Gyarmathy, Ferenc Kardos and Sándor Simó, appear no less
misguided, if for different reasons. All take place in the Hungary of the
Stalinist years and are probably made with the aim of providing a more
complex and deeper statement on the kind of country which was inhabited
by those we still live together with. What else could be the reason why,
after all the outstanding investigative documentary and feature films of
the past fifteen years, this theme is again tackled? The question sadly
goes unanswered. The Prosecution (A vád; Sára) is about atrocities
Soviet soldiers committed against innocent civilians during the war; its
vision is one-sided, the historical aspect biassed and repeated to boredom.
The message of this feature film adaptation of a true story is that the
good, in this case a rural peasant family, suffer unjustly amongst inhuman
circumstances, while the evil, i.e. the Soviet army that arrived as liberators
and stayed on as invaders, went unpunished, whatever their sins. Escape
(Szökés) by Lívia Gyarmathy, is a misstyled old wives'
tale about the Hungarian Gulag. Few have known that in the fifties a Siberian-type
forced labour camp was set up in an ore mine near Recsk, in which intellectuals
and "class aliens" tried to survive in inhuman conditions. Scriptwriter
Géza Böszörményi was one of the inmates, which
makes one wonder all the more why the story of the unique attempt to make
a group escape turns into such a boring film, when there could be no better
raw material available on which to base an exciting and absorbing depiction
of the age. István Kardos's The Smallest Foundation in the World
(A világ legkisebb alapítványa), on the founding of
a shelter for dogs, an undertaking by the wife and orphan son of László
Rajk, a Communist Minister of the Interior executed in 1949 in the course
of the most important of the Hungarian show-case trials, and the widow
of the leftist Count, Mihály Károlyi, would have made a proper
low-budget television film if only the director had anything to say through
the real historical characters. The slow-paced story is about not much
else than the complete blank that is the director's mind. Every Sunday
(Franciska vasárnapjai) by Sándor Simó is more ambitious,
aiming to present horrid circumstances through authentic and credible relationships
and flesh-and-blood characters.
These films are reminiscent of the conscience-stricken American films
on the Vietnam war. Hackneyed works fail to offer a complex view or an
explanation for the events, nor do they shape our picture of, and personal
responses to, them. They are indeed likely to alienate us from the material.
Anyone setting out in this hard and dangerous direction is in a difficult
position, for it is easy to lapse into self-repetition--think of the flood
of Soviet war propaganda films--or miss the chance, for want of proper
motivation, of confronting audiences with the myriad of horrors we committed
or suffered, the monstrous ideas which more or less survive in us to this
day, and the far from independent mass we remain in our heart of hearts,
longing to be controlled. The truth--and the shame of it--is that some
ten to fifteen years ago more interesting, more complex and far more disturbing
works were produced about this very period.
It would be unfair if in examining this latest crop of Hungarian films
the exceptions that confirm the rule were not mentioned too. Markedly conspicuous
among the weak or mediocre films in the disappointing scene, are several
important films made in 1996, the mille-centennial of the Magyar Conquest.
Attila Janisch's Long Dusk (Hosszú alkony), Péter Tímár's
Dolly birds (Csinibaba) and Felix Prize winning János Szász's
The Witman Boys (A Witman-fiúk) are of a markedly different quality.
These are demanding and determined film-makers who can, like and want to
work hard, an attitude which shines through every single shot. Far from
impeccable, their films nevertheless indicate clearly that you do not necessarily
have to go along with the current. Long Dusk is a film adaptation of a
short story, The Bus, by the American writer Shirley Jackson, who is not
well known in Hungary. The plot is built up with a firm hand and is placed
in a transitional, half-Hungarian, half-American environment--much to the
benefit of this surreal and sub-real tale.
Tímár started out as a member of the independent filmmakers'
movement and is by now the most demanding and scrupulous filmmaker in Hungary.
He is not afraid to experiment with sound and visual techniques. In Dollybirds
he hit upon a theme that matched his experimental drive in an ironic presentation,
scattered with video-clip inserts from the rock music of the early sixties.
Three years after his Woyzeck achieved international acclaim, János
Szász has come up with an implacable film based on a short story
by Géza Csáth, a writer who flourished at the beginning of
the century. The road of the fatherless teenage Witman brothers who are
brought up in an unloving, rural small-town milieu leads from torturing
animals straight to matricide. Confident of the atmo sphere the director
and his faithful cameraman Tibor Máthé, can create, the film
is this year's Hungarian nominee for an Oscar.
Whether there is a way out of a very critical state is too early to
say. More and more people think that things cannot go on like this any
longer. This is borne out by several developments--a new committee has
been chosen to manage state funds, 500,000 went to see Dollybirds, and
producers' viewpoints are now given pre ference in the specifications for
new script competitions. The tendency is also evident in the introduction
of a new category--the low-budget film, the first funded example of which
is The Orb (Országalma), to be shown at the next film week in February
1998. Equally promising is the fact that, emboldened by his earlier suc
cess, Tímár has finished a new comedy, Zimmer Feri, and that
the Hungarian-born Hollywood producer Andrew G. Vajna has made a film,
Out of Order (A miniszter félrelép), strictly on a commercial
basis, from a Ray Cooney play, with popular actors, on release just before
Christmas.
Patiently or impatiently, cinephiles are waiting for a breakthrough.
We keep our fingers crossed; it is in our best interest too. We love film,
and above anything else we want to see good Hungarian films.
András Csejdy
is a free-lance film critic and writer.
