“Teströl és lélekröl (On Body and Soul) is an idiosyncratic love story full of lyricism and humour, free of all social conventions. It impresses us with the subtlety and eloquence of its style and involves us in its joy of living and loving.”
--- The citation for the FIPRESCI prize bestowed at the Berlin Film Festival
Hungarian cinema touched its
zenith in the Seventies and Eighties when a group of remarkable Hungarian directors
delivered their best works: Zoltan Fabri, Istvan Szabo, Miklos Jansco, Istvan
Gaal, Karoly Makk, and Marta Meszaros—in that order. Then there was a lull for several decades while
the director Bela Tarr briefly captured the imagination of a new generation of
filmgoers of the Nineties and at the turn of this century. Now in 2017, Hungarian
director Ildikó Enyedi brings back to the floundering Hungarian cinema the
power of yore.
Just as Zoltan Fabri’s brilliant The Fifth Seal offered food for thought
as few films do, director Ildikó Enyedi presents in On Body and Soul a range of philosophical thoughts captured through
near silent sequences that discusses issues pertaining to the human body and
soul---often presenting contrasting ethereal natural behaviour of animals in
the forest with the bloody horror of an abattoir for another set of animals.
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| The stag and the doe--arresting award-winning cinematography of Mate Herbai |
On Body and Soul is not about animals—it is about us, human
beings. The main plot is an unusual love
story of a physically unattractive old cripple falling in love with an
emotionally crippled beautiful woman half his age. Director and scriptwriter Enyedi
evidently loves to study body and soul in many facets of everyday life, not
just limited to the world of a Hungarian abattoir. If one looks at the subjects the film present,
they could present obvious metaphors for larger geographies.
Enyedi chose Hungarian cinematographer
Máté Herbai (who has primarily worked with the little- known but not
insignificant Hungarian director Atilla Gigor) to bring magic to her feature film
made after a significant 18 year hiatus from making regular feature films, just
as Terrence Malick took a 20 year break between
Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. Enyedi’s last feature
film was Simon the Magician (1999)
that won awards worldwide following her 1989 Cannes winner My Twentieth Century. Now, Herbai (under directions of Enyedi) ,captures
intimate images of a stag with antlers
in the company of a doe in a snowy forest.
There is no copulation on screen but the animals are evidently attracted
to each other. The film sequences seem
to talk to the viewer. That’s the first
chapter of the “soul” in the film.
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| The lead characters go home after work separately until their separate dreams bring them together |
Enyedi and Herbai follow up with a
contrapuntal sequence also bereft of music. This is of cattle waiting quietly
before they are slaughtered. Herbai captures the eyes of the bull which seems
to anticipate its fate as it looks through its cage at the slaughterhouse
workers as they casually chat before they begin their day’s work. Both the lady
janitor and the bull looks up at the sun tying up humans and animals in a
cosmic silent gesture. Enyedi and Herbai
do not show the actual slaughter—only the preparation and the aftermath. Yet,
the sequence is chilling and yet aesthetically rendered.
The filmmakers state
in the end-credits that no animal was killed specifically for the film but they
merely recorded an actual event in the abattoir. That’s the second “chapter” of the film that
gradually moves from the “soul” to the “body,” from the shots of the live animal
to its dead body as prime beef portions. This sequence is not for the queasy
animal lovers in the audience but yet it is aesthetically presented as few
filmmakers can.
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| The CFO (Morcsanyi) watches his new Quality Inspector (Borbely) at work |
As the film progresses, the viewer
realizes Enyedi has merely introduced us to the human soul and body in the main
plot of the film bringing to the fore the human stag and the human doe,
connected through dreams. While
scientifically much of Enyedi’s imaginative tale can be pooh-poohed, the tale
is extraordinary. It is the unusualness
of the situation that grabs the viewer. We are presented a man who is a cripple,
who once had an active sex life, and now has a grown up daughter, suddenly
taking an interest in a reclusive new worker in the abattoir, where he is the
influential Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
Enyedi ‘s and Herbai’s initial visual introduction of the lady is
superb: she is standing outside the building alone, while others are chatting
in groups. She retreats into the shadows
when she realizes her legs are being burnt by the sun’s rays. Enyedi develops her character as one who is
very smart—one who can figure out likely conversations between people without
hearing them, a person who can recall dates of incidents in her life perfectly
unlike most of us, a person who takes her job seriously and professionally. Even
her plate of food is carefully placed to geometric alignment. (Oh, Enyedi, how
I admire the lovely details of your script!) And she is naive about sex (and
music) even though men are attracted towards her but is evidently interested in
experiencing it.
Enyedi does the same with the
human “stag.” He once had a fair share of women in his life. The CFO still has
a glad eye for sexy women that comes in his view but has grown up sufficiently
to apologize profusely when he caught staring. Unlike the human doe who believes
in rules, the CFO knows how to keep the local police chief happy by presenting
him choice portions of beef. Unlike the human doe, the human stag has no problems meeting up with strangers. They are contrasting characters
What brings the opposites together?
Dreams.
Sigmund Freud would have laughed at the amazing proposition of Enyedi’s film
but even the stodgiest detractor will have to agree the improbable scenario presented
in the film could happen. After all, it is a reworking of the Beauty and the Beast
tale, cleverly packaged.
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| Separate bedrooms in a split screen. Both characters look forward to their dreams as they prepare to sleep |
The film is not just Enyedi and
Herbai. The lead male role of Endre, the CFO, is played by a nonprofessional
actor, Geza Morcsanyi, who in real life is a successful publisher of Hungarian
books, has never acted in a film before and may not in the future. However, he does edit film scripts and has
written one screenplay. The female lead, Maria, is played by Alexandra Borbely,
who has acted in a couple of feature films. The lead actors are very
convincing.
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| Geza Morcsanyi plays the CFO |
The film introduced this film critic
to the wonderful voice, songs and lyrics of British folk singer Laura Marling
whose song “What he wrote” wraps up the
film. The lyrics of the song do not tie up with the story of the film. My guess
is that scriptwriter/director Enyedi merely introduced Marling to the viewers
as an extension of the sequence where music store owner suggests a CD as good music to the character Maria who
cannot make up her own mind on what music CD to buy and ends up buying the
suggested disc.
Enyedi’s film is one of the best
films of 2017. What is amusing is how a lady scriptwriter is able to create the
minor characters—the sex obsessed male workers, the amusing psychologist, and
the side plot of a worker stealing sex stimulants for human consumption that was
meant for animals about to be butchered. The film is Hungary’s submission for the Best Foreign
Film category at the 2017 Oscars. A formidable
one indeed! Hungarian cinema is back at the top.
P.S. The film On Body and Soul won four awards and honours at the Berlin Film Festival: The Golden
Bear award for the best film of the year; the FIPRESCI Prize; the Prize of the
Ecumenical Jury; and the Prize of the Reader Jury of the daily Berliner Morgenpost .
It
also won the prestigious 2017 Cameraimage Award for its cinematography by Mate
Herbai and the top award at the Sydney film festival. It also won the audience
award at the Mumbai film festival. Hungarian director Zoltan Fabri’s The Fifth Seal (1976) and Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line have been reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click
on the names of the films in this post script to access those reviews.)
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