216. Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi’s film “Teströl és lélekröl” (On Body and Soul) (2017) (Hungary) based on her original screenplay: A stunning script involving dreams and matching dreamlike cinematography bring Hungarian cinema back to the heights it had climbed several decades ago.

 “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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)