Hundstage

This austrian film is rather slow-paced and deals with everyday life's madness. A collection of 6 parallel "stories" - more like incidents from the most miserable people'e everyday life. It deeply reminded me of Michael Haneke's "71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance" (1994), only this one is much more solid, more interesting and much more depressing.

Clearly, I film for the few people that can appreciate non-Hollywood event depiction and shooting and slow-pace at times. Certainly, not a pleasant experience this is a true original as films must be.

Trailers of this movie may show scenes of violence or non mainstream sexuality, but these scenes are just rare fragments, picked out to attract audience. They are, of course showing the main message of the movie:

People who are constantly kicked on their heads in their jobs and lives, using power, which they may have somewhere else, to notoriously oppress others. And at the low end of the oppression chain, mostly women.

A movie showing this as brutally as Hundstage is surely tough to face, but having to endure such lives, is even tougher.

Technically the film is much like Short Cuts, but consisting of documentary style episodes, featuring people like your neighbour, playing just the way they are. Without any glitter, and most disturbingly, without any hope. Its documentary style makes the movie even more disturbing, because you realize, such people are out there, and there are many of them, although our society focuses on the nice exterior looks. Somewhere the porn industry has to do its business, somewhere unreported domestic violence has to take place, somewhere hopes have to shatter. I sure do know such people.

If you want to see a movie without any funny scenes (some may think the handicapped woman repeating the top ten supermarkets is funny, but this happens for real) and without any melodramatic, go watch this movie. However it will lose when you are focusing on subtitles I fear, as subtitles can´t transport accentuation.

Being absolutely unfamiliar with Austrian cinema, I've got simply astounded by this movie. More than two hours long and all the time developing the slow, monotonous rhythm it could have been a real torture for the beholder, but instead it offers something unique and very captivating.

Here are few characters, whose life paths constantly interlock in a little city in tragic coincidences. The old widower with his dog. The mad hitch-hiking girl, whose hobby is exasperating her companions with useless chatter. The middle-aged couple, whose only daughter had died in an accident some time ago and who hardly speak to each other, despite their living in the same house. The hysterical guy, torturing his girl, who works in a strip club. The aging woman who gets bullied by her macho-looking hairy boyfriend. Everyone is unhappy and that's the simple keynote. But almost no one stirs up sympathy. The world is sweaty, dried-up, brutal, senseless. And all the kindness it can provide is epitomized in the final strip-tease that the elderly maid is doing for the old man with the dog.

The dog is certainly already poisoned to that time. The mad girl is raped. The aging woman is humiliated.

The "everything is bad" slogan can seem trite, but the director Ulrich Seidl proves it with cogency. "Hundstage" is probably the most dismal film of the 21th century so far, but it works great due to its exceptional cinematic merits. According to what I know it's the first Seidl's feature film, all his previous outings were strictly documentary. Spreading his meticulous attitude to things on this work, Seidl attains the highest degree of realism, maybe even what we use to call hyper-realism. "Hundstage" is stunning by all means and comes highly recommended for all art-film fans.

I rented this (the uncut version with hardcore scenes intact) with the thought that it might offer some insight into the daily lives of the people of this suburban neighborhood. I found instead just rather pointless montages of bland characters without any rhyme or reason. It's acted nicely and there is nothing technically wrong with the film it just isn't interesting really. We wander from one scene to another some brutal and vile and some just dull. I'm not sure what the director was trying to go for but short cuts or magnolia its not. I did not feel disgusted really but just disappointed in the lack of purpose the film had.

An outstanding film by all accounts. Bleak, yes. Funny, yes. Shocking, yes. To all those reviewers harping on about lack of plot, then surely this is to miss the point. Seidl draws on his documentary background and indeed blends the this with the fictional elements. Do we really need the narrative signposts that we are force-fed in films. Life is not that black and white. I cannot understand the constant desire for fast paced cutting. Go and watch a commercial if you need to but leave the rest of us with well made, insightful films that speak about the bigger issues in life. This is a marvellous film that is disturbing and shocking but not in a gratuitous manner. I think it is in the tiny minutiae of life that these moments are revealed. I found the moment when the couple visit the grave and when the old woman does the striptease to be very moving. You need to look underneath the surface of the characters to see what makes them tick and Seidl has done this. As a result we have complex characters that seem too real for some viewers perhaps to stomach. I should stop defending the film. Just go and see it. Brilliant film-making.