Movie Impressions - III
Telluride tonight featured the Hungarian movie "Kontroll", superficially a good-versus-evil thriller, but with twists and subplots so bizarre I'm not at all sure how to review it. I don't know how to explain its brilliance without your knowing what occurs on screen, and I can't tell you much about what happens while avoiding spoilers.
The movie's events occur over the space of a few days in the subway system of an unnamed Eastern European city (it's shot in Budapest, but the title "Kontroll" is meaningless in Hungarian). A mysterious badguy is pushing commuters to their deaths in front of arriving trains. Our protagonists, a bunch of nutcase homeless ticket inspectors who seem to live in the subway's underground world, are up against this badguy... as well as a slew of commuters who don't give a damn about their authority to actually inspect tickets. Other colourful characters that pop in and out include
"Kontroll" is liberally peppered with comic moments and is very fast-paced -- a rarity in Eastern European cinema. The camerawork is just superb and shows the subway system in all its messy and grimy detail: you can smell the place! You eventually long to get out and smell fresh air, and the movie builds up tremendous anticipation for the moment when you'll finally do that. There is, of course, the badguy who must be dealt with, so you might think that makes for a predictable ending. Wrong! In fact, I would bet that no ten-minute sequence in this movie is predictable.
Watch it and find out how it all really plays out.
The movie has a cool official website, and there's a bunch of nice stills at the National Film Archive of Hungary website.
The movie's events occur over the space of a few days in the subway system of an unnamed Eastern European city (it's shot in Budapest, but the title "Kontroll" is meaningless in Hungarian). A mysterious badguy is pushing commuters to their deaths in front of arriving trains. Our protagonists, a bunch of nutcase homeless ticket inspectors who seem to live in the subway's underground world, are up against this badguy... as well as a slew of commuters who don't give a damn about their authority to actually inspect tickets. Other colourful characters that pop in and out include
- a woman who rides the trains dressed completely in a teddy bear outfit,
- a subway driver who works in a state of permanent inebriation, and
- a slippery punk kid called "Bootsie" who taunts the ticket inspectors by spraying them with shaving foam.
"Kontroll" is liberally peppered with comic moments and is very fast-paced -- a rarity in Eastern European cinema. The camerawork is just superb and shows the subway system in all its messy and grimy detail: you can smell the place! You eventually long to get out and smell fresh air, and the movie builds up tremendous anticipation for the moment when you'll finally do that. There is, of course, the badguy who must be dealt with, so you might think that makes for a predictable ending. Wrong! In fact, I would bet that no ten-minute sequence in this movie is predictable.
Watch it and find out how it all really plays out.
The movie has a cool official website, and there's a bunch of nice stills at the National Film Archive of Hungary website.
posted by AC at 11:58 PM
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