Hukkle

It's hard to describe this film. It's quite unique. The closest I can compare it to are maybe the Cremaster films of Mathew Barney, but it's really something all of its own.

Hukkle is kind of a symphony of sights and sounds, without any real dialogue. It's just rhythms and patterns and cause and effect, and it's very very cool. Often funny, often disturbing, always fascinating. It's sort of like a nature documentary, with humans as just one of the subjects, just one part of the ecosystem. And underneath it all, there's a strange murder mystery.

I saw this film as part of the Seattle International Film Festival. I hope it gets a wider release, because I'd like to see it again. I want to work out some of the details that I missed the first time through.

There is something very mesmorizing about the rythmic hiccuping of an old man and the shots of pastoral Hungary. But that is not all the film is about. This debut film by Gyorgy Palfi hopefully is the first of many great films. At first this film may seem like a documentary about daily life in a small village, yet it becomes much more, and if you don't pay attention, you may miss the underlying story of a murder mystery. Also, the contrast of country life and technology is shown subtly.

At our showing of Hukkle at the SF International Film Festival, we were lucky enough to have the director present and he answered questions about the film. Though this film is fiction, the underlying occurences actually happened in a small village in Hungary in the 1900s.

Wonderful cinematography, beautiful scenery, unique sounds, and an original idea all contribute to making this film awe-inspiring.

I am happy that so many people from different countries have liked this Hungarian film - which is quite rare. I loved it, it is very cool, innovative and fascinating. The photography and sound design are excellent. I think it is not by chance that the first member of the crew named in the opening credits is precisely the sound designer.

You have to have some patience to get really into the film, but afterward, it is really worth it. Lots of black humor about eating and being eaten. In fact, eating does not mean anything good in this film...

The morale of the story is well summarized in the closing folksong "Ki az urát nem szereti" (Who does not love her husband). The only time where words are used in this film to say something....

And yes: "Hukkle" does not mean anything on Hungarian, it is an onomatopoetic (sound-imitating) word that imitates the sound of a hickup. (The real Hungarian word for hickup is "csuklás".)

I suppose we should be thankful for this. Its as purely cinematic as you will get if you think of narrative separate from vision. That's the philosophy of this, one I almost violently reject.

But we do have it. And it is enjoyable, clever, engaging. The notion here is one of granularity. I've written elsewhere about the size of the components in a film, that there are wonderful effects that can accrue when these are exploited. By that I meant component in several dimensions. There's the rhythm of the thing is how long the camera lingers and lines are spoken and effects presented. Mastery of this is rare but when you see it, it matters.

But there's granularity in the narrative as well. You might present chunks out of order, in which case the physical life of them is less important than the degree of abstraction in the way they are presented. Moving, shifting levels of abstraction only seems to work when the size of the brick, the steps in levels of abstraction, are constant. When these two bricks: abstraction in several senses and physical heartbeat are modulated together, then you have something that can penetrate your being.

Now to this. Its lovely. Its a slightly interesting puzzle that leaves us with a refreshing and welcome moral. Its offbeat and therefore attractive on that score as well. But I really didn't like it because there's no understanding of the bricks, the nature of the units that make up a film. This isn't me saying I like this tradition or convention, oh no. Its a matter of how our minds actually work.

Look at this seriously. Its difference from what we normally expect is part of its reason to be and presumably is there to increase its effectiveness at what it is. Small things like a bee's dance, or a bud's breaking are the same abstract "size" as larger things like planting and marrying, and they are the same "size" as global earthquakes and war. Placed in this is a mass murder of husbands, established also as the same size.

Its a nice idea. Wish it worked.

Interesting as all getout is the nature of the Hungarian mind. This is a small country. Many small countries in Europe, especially in the southeast, suffer an inferiority complex. Hungary is a bit different. They are ethnically different from other Europeans, profoundly so. They are a nation with one city surrounded by farms. So invested are they in this city that it is the most urban and in many ways sophisticated in Europe. Hungary — given it size — has produced a phenomenal number of brilliant scientists and mathematicians. Absolutely phenomenal.

And if you know these men and their work, you'll know that they are/were the primary warriors in defining the world geometrically. You don't want a treatise on warring theories in science in a movie comment, but be aware that there are different views of how things are put together in the world, and it boils down to how you abstract the bricks.

We owe the bright Hungarians for the notion that the world has symmetries that transcend numbers and probabilities. Mirrors exist before the eye does. If you go to Budapest, you will find great minds. But if you go to the outskirts and talk to the non-urbanites, you get a kindergarten version of geometric existence.

That's where this comes from. Its interesting. Its novel. Its ineffective and dumb. But pretty. Blocks, all the same.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

...and even then the Hukkle keeps its own regular rhythm at the very end.

As a kid, I remember there used to be a visual game in magazines where a photograph zoomed in extremely tight or shot from an odd angle was presented, and you had to guess what the object was. This film features many such shots...and in its speechless stroke of genius, the story itself is presented that way as well.

Let me state that this movie is clearly not for everyone, at first it reminded me of the beloved Ann Arbor Film Festival, which hosts many fine but often fiercely independent short films. But "Hukkle", while succeeding in its artful attack, moves beyond that.

But it does so slowly...

The film moves almost at the pace of the tiny Hungarian village where it was mostly shot. Indeed from the DVD extras, I get the sense that Gyorgy Palfi wanted to have the film linger even longer in spots. The (human) actors are all non-professional; while I believe the pig, cat, snake, mole and frog were all professional. The frog also was apparently delicious, at least according to the famished catfish.

I really want to resist saying more, I'm just trying to figure out a way to direct the people who would enjoy this film toward it. I suspect that if you ever entertained notions of attending film school, you would enjoy this. Rambunctious creativity is on display, as it was in "Daisies" which I recently watched and reviewed. Similarly, just seeing a village might appeal to some folks like myself living in the United *Sprawl* of America.

In that village, we see some folks living with plastic sheets as part of their homes. I don't think this could have been made anywhere ...nor by anyone else. Palfi's approach on screen is gentle but, I don't know, proudly peculiar?? Or maybe peculiarly proud? He likely was a city mouse out in the country, but he was welcomed in to their wine caves, their apiaries and those plastic thatched houses, but more importantly the lives of the sturdier folks occupying them.

With the DVD you get a couple of bonus tracks, the subtitled commentary by Palfi and his cinematographer was very insightful on several levels. It almost seemed at times like the film was not only a riddle from Palfi to us the audience, but a puzzling challenge to Gergely Poharnok and the rest of the crew!

Additionally Palfi's voice, it's genuinely genial tone but never mawkishly so, while I don't speak Hungarian, I was curious to see him interact with the villages...and that is also in the Extras!

I eagerly look forward to more of his work, the Taxidermist is not readily available yet...but hopefully soon. Oh, and here is a plug for having Palfi film an adaptation of "The Thought Gang" - a fine book by Tibor Fischer!

This film has grown from a 6 to a 7.5/10 for me...still rising!!

Thurston Hunger

Two more comments...

1) Would love to track down the music (and field recordings) to this.

2) Funniest scene in the film...the very un-Hollywood police chase!!