Kornél Mundruczó's amazing, troubling WHITE GOD: like no canine movie you'll have ever seen

Old Yeller was never like this. Kornél Mundruczó's Hungarian masterpiece, WHITE GOD, (Fehér isten) will leave you in some kind of state -- grace, shock, awe, or maybe just amazed at the proficiency of this filmmaker, the only other work of whose I've seen is the odd, and oddly memorable, Delta from 2008. I believe it is safe to say that there has never been a "dog movie" anything like this one -- which within (or, hell, without, too) its genre, also becomes a revenge thriller, an allegory about "the other," ode to "dumb" animals, sci-fi/fantasy epic and more. It jumps so many genres so thoroughly that it simply becomes sui generis.
And then some.

Directed and co-written (with Viktória Petrányi and Kata Wéber) by Mr. Mundruczó (shown at right), the film begins with a scene of marvel -- and one that does not look particularly CGI-ed. I can't claim to be any expert on special effects, but when they look as real, as genuine and "special" as they do here, attention must be paid.

The film then flashes backward to a previous time, in which its story carefully unfolds, before eventually catching up with itself. We've seen this done many times before. What we have not seen is all this taking place in what can best be called a "dog movie."

That dog -- a character called Hagen (he is actually played by two dogs - one of whom is shown at left, sporting a bowtie at Cannes, where he was evidently the toast of the festival) -- is a keeper. You'll fall in love with him instantly, but be warned: What happens to Hagen is not easy to bear. Dog lovers won't want to miss this movie, but they may have a damned difficult time getting through it.

Hagen is the beloved pet of a high school girl named Lili (talented and beautiful newcomer Zsófia Psotta), about to spend three months with her estranged father due to her mom's having to go abroad for work. Dad is not much of a caretaker, and he most definitely does not like dogs. Trouble ahead.

The movie will make you wonder if Hungary, the country from which it comes, is particularly anti-canine. Or if perhaps this goes with the territory of most of Eastern Europe. From what we see here, much of the populace couldn't care less about the creatures -- who are, evidently, not considered the Eastern European man's best friend -- unless he can make a killing off them, in the process perhaps killing the animal itself.

A large section of this film deals with what happens when Hagen comes into contact with a man who trains dog for fighting. This is by far the most difficult portion to watch, and yet it is also one of the film's strongest, calling into question the old nature/nurture theory once again.

Parenting is another major theme, as is coming-of-age, and to its credit, Mundruczó's movie doesn't shy away from the difficulties here, either. What make it work so well is how all these themes -- including that of the unwanted, the "other" -- are so thoroughly fused that you finally cannot (nor would want to) separate them.

Music and its uses are paramount, as well, bringing to mind again those "charms to soothe the savage breast." The finale -- fierce, rich, suspenseful, emotional -- is both monumental and mysterious. I suspect this is a scene you will never forget.

White God (even that title is loaded and mysterious), one of the finest films Magnolia Pictures has yet released, recently screened as part of the New Directors/New Films series, opens theatrically this Friday, March 27, across Canada and in New York City at the IFC Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. The Friday following it hits six more cities, including Los Angeles (at the Landmark NuArt) and then makes its way across the country in the weeks and months to follow. You can see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, by clicking here.

World War II and survival via learning: János Szász's uber-bleak tale of THE NOTEBOOK

A pair of attractive young twin boys graces THE NOTE BOOK, but anyone who mistakes this film with the movie crafted from the sentimental, sodden Nicholas Sparks novel will probably go running from the theater within a very few minutes. This newer Hungarian film traces the lives of these twins, once they have been sent off to the country to live with Grandma, after Hitler's troops have entered Hungary and begun despoiling it.

Using twins as its main characters to bring the point of the novel and film home was a fine idea because of the nature of twins: to be so firmly rooted one to the other that no other character could in any way exist to pull the pair apart. Had the "hero" of the tale been a singular character, he (or she) might have looked to another, older, wiser person for guidance here.

The twins (above) have each other, and together they determine to learn how to survive by watching and aping their "masters" -- who are in this case their truly horrible grandmother (below) and the Nazis who overrun the country. (That's the fine Danish actor, Ulrich Thomsen, shown two photos below as the leading German officer.)

If you are imagining that this scenario would result in one of the bleakest, ugliest portraits of WWII to so far make it to the screen, you'd be on the mark. One of  the pair writes what they have learned in that "notebook" of the title (the film even uses the French title of the international best-seller on which it was based, Le Grand Cahier, as a kind of recognizable subtitle), which we see from time to time.

Mostly we see the horrors of wartime brought home in a somewhat different manner, as our twins stand up to their oppressors by hardening their bodies, minds and hearts. This leads to perhaps the most shocking, deadening finale you will have encountered -- even in the overrun realm of WWII and Holocaust films.

While I refer to the Holocaust, The Notebook is not really a Holocaust movie, as the twins are not Jewish, and neither are most of the characters we see and meet here. The one scene of Jews being rounded up, and a young girl the twins become involved with (above and below) ratting out a local shoemaker as Jewish, is well done but somewhat peripheral. (Later we see smoke rising from the camp chimneys.) And because the movie jumps so often and so quickly from incident to incident, we get no real sense of what the shoemaker meant to the twins. We are told, but we don't see.

This jumping from incident to incident seems a hallmark of the film's director, János Szász (shown below), and it was probably a wise one in terms of cramming into the film's very cut-down 104-minute running time as many bits and pieces as possible.

These incidents do not necessarily grow more horrible as they go along (they're dreadful from the get-go), and yet in terms of wartime humiliation, they cannot help but finally appear that way.

How war dehumanizes a population is the major theme here, as shown us via the twins. Not that certain members of that population were not already plenty dehumanized (Grandma, for one). But how our boys lose all shred of humanity until their final shocking act -- which, not incidentally, I think, allows them to "grow" in a certain way that they have, until now, denied themselves.

What kind of growth this is, however, you will have to decide for yourself. Becoming autonomous has rarely been shown us in quite this kind of manner.

Whether or not you'll want to put yourself through the toils of this particular Notebook is an interesting question. The film is certainly well-done of its kind, yet what it adds to our history of World War II, I am not certain. The twins (newcomers László Gyémánt and András Gyémánt) give as good a performance (for untutored actors) as you could wish, even if their expressions seldom vary, and they never seem to outgrow their matching sweaters over the course of the war.

Supporting performances are on the mark, as well, with Granny (Piroska Molnár) especially good, while the twins' mom (Gyöngyvér Bognár, shown above and below) and dad (Ulrich Matthes) are in fine form to show us the before and after of  that particular generation during WWII.

From Sony Pictures Classics, The Notebook (Le Grand Cahier) opens this Friday, August 29, in New York (at the Quad Cinema) and Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal. The following Friday it will expand in  the L.A. area to Laemmle's Town Center 5 and Playhouse 7.

The inventive Hungarian Oscar submission: Szabolcs Hajdu's BIBLIOTHÈQUE PASCAL

Keeping up with the best foreign language film submission for the yearly Academy Award's ceremony is getting to be a nearly full-time occupation. But it's worth that time. For every outright bomb (Greece's Dogtooth, that made it practi-cally to the Oscar finish line by using transgressive sex to hook critics into going along for an empty ride) or so-so movie (Mama Gógó from Iceland, Germany's When We Leave), you're likely to come across a splendid film that you wouldn't be seeing otherwise. One such, and the subject of today's post, is Hungary's entry into this year's sweepstakes, BIBLIOTHÈQUE PASCAL. And a more beautiful, ugly, strange yet finally comprehensible movie you'll be hard-pressed to find.

That soon-to-be airtight wetsuit on the poster above (and in one of the stills below) makes for a breathtakingly creepy image and scene, and its use by writer/director (and ofttimes actor) Szabolcs Hajdu, pictured at right, is as shocking as it is bizarre. Part of a very high-end and exceedingly literate brothel at which wealthy clientele have all sorts of wishes fulfilled, the costume and its use allows Hajdu to give vent, I would guess, to some of his more grotesque fantasies. That these come side by side with others of delicious sweetness and light is what makes the movie so memorably odd. And the cinematography by András Nagy -- interior, exterior, natural light or created -- is simply stunning, frame by frame by gorgeous frame.

The story begins with a quietly distraught mother appealing to a social service worker for the return of her daughter, whom she had been left with an aunt of possibly less-than-sterling character. But then no character in this amazing movie approaches sterling, let alone silverplate or brass. You could, if you were so inclined, cal this movie a treatise on how precarious is survival in the Eastern Block -- whether yesterday, today or tomorrow.

And so our heroine Mona (a fine performance from Orsolya Török-Illyés, above, that combines strength and steely beauty in equal doses) begins her explanation to the social worker.

From the first, this seems a phantasmagoric tale of love, jealousy and betrayal, followed by a quick, then an even quicker, change of partners.

Which leads to a night of passion (and more great visuals!) with a very hot, but not long-lasting criminal named Viorel (Andi Vasluianu, below), which leads to the birth of that child.

Men, we quickly learn, are not to be trusted, most of all one's own father, below, who makes a very dirty deal, regarding Mona.

And this takes us to the titular bibliothèque -- a combination of the high-tech and old-fashioned bordello sleaze, the highly literary and torture porn -- that provides some of the most beautiful and creepy scenes in the film.

Hajdu creates an almost constant tension between the gorgeous visuals we love to watch and the subject matter, which grows darker and darker.

The climax -- which involves that wet-suit,

along with a marching band (above) -- culminates in an amazing, funny/sad view of a group people in the street that is one of several shots in the film that I suspect will find a permanent place in my movie memory bank. And the ending? Ohmigod: quiet, sweet, sad, surprising perfection.

But what does all of this mean? Ask that social worker, who takes this wild fantasy and tries to provide it with more "real" details, in order to help Mona. Yet it may be mankind's very ability to spin fairy tales, dark as they are, out of our worst woes that allows us to keep going. Ask Mona, and Mr. Hajdu, who've spun one of the most spectacular of all in this movie that ought to have at least been shortlisted for "Oscar" glory -- and which you really must see.

But how? According to the film's U.S. distributor, GoDigital Media Group, you can click the SAVE button on the film's Netflix site -- and hope that the service gets the DVD and adds it to its streaming facility soon.  Meanwhile, you can rent and download Bibliothèque Pascal via iTunes (and with cinematography this good, I'd pay the extra buck for the high definition version).

DELTA, Kornél Mundruczó's movie-made-twice, debuts; screenwriter Q&A

Woody Allen did it once. But that was intentional on the part of the filmmaker.  When Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó (shown below) was nearly finished filming DELTA, which finally opens in New York this week, his leading actor suddenly died. The film-
maker had to begin again and -- given the chemistry that exists between actors -- an almost entirely new cast was recruited, and the entire film was shot a second time.

While TrustMovies finds some worthwhile things about this second attempt, he wishes he might have seen the first one, in which, according to its screenwriter Yvette Biro (see the Q&A that follows), changes occurred in this second filming that, to TM's mind, renders the finished movie heavy-handed.  It almost appears that the story's ending was where the moviemakers started, working backwards and piecing together a plot that would ensure their planned finale.

A young man returns to his "home" in a Hungarian town located along the Danube.  There, his father has died, his mother taken up with a new man, while his sister, with whom he appears to have had little previous acquaintance, works in the family's bar.  The young man clearly is not welcomed, except by the sister, but he sets up living quarters in an old family shack by the river.  As sis and bro grow closer, they are warned repeatedly yet pay no mind. Literally everyone we meet in this movie -- except brother, sister and an uncle -- is downright unpleasant, and when complications ensue (don't they always?), there is little question what will happen.

The views of the Danube are lovely indeed, but the humanity we wallow with quickly grow tiresome.  All of its activities are joyless and bleak. Not one speaks much, so there is little dialog in the film, and this is probably just as well.  The film's slow pace allows us to consider the society of eastern Europe, under the thumbs of feudal lords, the aristocracy, Communist dictatorships and finally -- oh god, no -- some bastardized form of Capitalism, reducing the populace to a bunch of petty, nasty, small-minded hypocrites.

Delta is full of interesting shots: silhouettes and bodily extremities; only after some time has passed does the director allow us many close-ups of his characters.  The "hero" in particular (he's played by Felix Lajko, above right) remains a mystery.  Laconic in the extreme, he finally turns from low-key passive into someone hot and fraught.  Sister, too (the actress is Orsolya Toth, shown above and below), is a girl of few words, yet both performers are attractive and interesting enough to hold our attention.  You could call the movie "primal," though in modern times, backward seems more appopriate.  Facets is releasing Delta, which opens this Friday, March 12 at the Cinema Village in New York City.

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After viewing Delta and learning that its screenwriter Yvette Biro was here in the U.S., we arranged for a very short Q&A via email. In the correspondence that follows, TrustMovies appears in boldface, while Yvette's response is shown in standard type. (There are spoilers aplenty below, so if you intend to see the movie, come back to the Q&A afterward.)

Were you always connected with the movie in both versions, the earlier one featuring the actor who died suddenly, and the current version? If so, how was it to work with a different cast on the same material? Did you have to make a number of scripts changes to accommodate the new cast? Finally, do you feel that the movie might be better in this later version?

The first version was truly different because we were closer to the original-classical Electra story. In this one, the murder of the father (though only as the basic situation and departure point,) defined the Electra's motivations and later the brother’s actions. It was their passion of taking revenge on the mother and her new accomplice-lover. Also, Electra was on the side of the people, against the rudeness of the new “governing power.” In a bit more hopeful ending, only the brother could escape, Electra became a victim, perishing in the fight.

With the tragic death of the original actor who played the brother we had to simplify the story, focusing more on the relationship of the siblings. They became naturally close to each other in this hostile environment, having in the background the denied crime. The restrained incest was always there.

The film is considered Hungarian, I believe, yet it is set in Romania, in what looks like a small town, amongst people who have what we would call here in the USA, a very “small-town” mentality: unpleasant, small-minded, hypocritical, nasty, angry, jealous, murderous, in fact. Is Romania the country of choice for folk who mirror these adjectives, or might the same thing be found in the small towns of Hungary (or Germany, where, I believe, some of the production money came from)?

Right, the film is Hungarian but the physical environment had its inspiring function with its natural beauty and peacefulness. It was the landscape that had its primordial force in the articulation of the story: maintaining the remoteness, without the overemphasized social or ethnic background.

Did you or the director ever envision any other outcome for these characters? Could the story have taken any path that might have proven more hopeful?

We found that the wonderful idea to build a house, to work together, is simple and by principle, great, showing hope and looking for a better future. This common understanding and closeness are more significant than the guarded incest. Their love becomes natural, though timid, and not a scandalous, erotic sin.

The film is odd and interesting because it sets up a taboo (incest) and then breaks it -- partially because the possible mates that these two characters have to choose from seems a pretty puny bunch: They can either choose each other, which is, in most societies, a no-no, or pick someone from the gallery of creeps on display. Only the girl’s uncle seems remotely like a decent guy. Whoops -- that would be semi-incestuous, too. Any thoughts on this, which actually plays into question #3, above.

Yes. Thus the solution that they are not only excommunicated but punished to death became an unfortunately undeniable truth today: “Otherness” and having different habits, ways of living, is rarely accepted, and intolerance and hatred can often be regrettably violent.

With this sorrowful recognition we got closer to our everyday experience.