Old Yorker

  • Katalin Varga

    Old YorkerFilm review

    Peter Strickland (2009)

    The film is dedicated to Edward Strickland (1921-2001), whose nephew is the writer-producer-director.  Peter Strickland used money inherited in his uncle’s will to fund this, his first feature.  Without any other financial backing, Strickland shot Katalin Varga in Transylvania, using a Hungarian and Romanian cast.  It doesn’t look like a film made on a low budget or the work of someone who’d never made a full-length feature before.   For all these reasons, it’s remarkable and admirable.  It’s also the bleakest new picture I’ve seen this year and the bleakness is less organic than imposed.   The working out of the story is grimly predetermined.  Neither Strickland’s plotting nor the central performance of Hilda Péter as the title character is good enough to conceal the fact.

    In the first scene, two men knock late at night on the door of what appears to be a basic rural dwelling:  they’re looking for a woman called Katalin Varga and the boy with whom they know her to be travelling.   (The heroine’s name is a puzzle:  when I googled ‘Wikipedia – Katalin Varga’ the day after seeing the film, I got an article about ‘the leader of the Transylvanian Miners’ Movement in the 1840s’.  I don’t know how common a name it is in Transylvania but if the film’s protagonist is named for this historical figure, the connection between them isn’t obvious.)   Strickland then cuts to daylight and open countryside.  We meet Katalin and immediately learn that her husband Zgismond (Florin Vidamski) has discovered a secret she’s been keeping from him throughout their marriage and which she had revealed to only one other person.  That other person is the woman who’s now telling Katalin that others, including her husband, are in the know:  Katalin is desperate to be assured her son Orbán (Norbert Tank) isn’t among them.   Zgismond brands Katalin a whore and, although it’s clear he loves her, tells her their marriage can’t continue and to take her bastard son away with her.   (It’s pretty clear from this point what the secret is.)

    Katalin and Orbán leave the village, travelling by horse and cart:  she tells the boy they are going to visit his dying grandmother.  In fact, they’re headed for a small town where, ten years or so ago, Katalin was raped.  Her marriage destroyed, she is going back to seek revenge on her attackers    She gets it in part, by seducing and then, while they’re having sex, killing the man, named Gergely (Roberto Giacomelli), who looked on and laughed while his companion raped her.   As Katalin avenges herself on Gergely, he tells her the name of the rapist – Antal.  It’s Gergely’s brothers-in-law who come to the smallholding after dark looking for Katalin.   At this point, the narrative jolts back into the present.   The farmer, who has denied knowledge of Katalin and Orbán, is assaulted (or worse) by his late-night callers.  When she calls him on her mobile, Zgismond, for the first time since her departure, agrees to talk with Katalin.  She makes clear she wants to come back.   Walking through fields, Katalin and Orbán come upon a man working.  She appears to recognise him immediately – although she’s not sure until they exchange names.  His is Antal.   The rest of the film describes a period of less than twenty-four hours on and around his land.  Antal strikes up a good relationship with the boy who is his son.  Katalin appears to hit it off with Antal’s devoted wife, Etelka.  Her husband’s rape of Katalin is revealed to Etelka who, next morning, hangs herself.  Katalin is apprehended by the men from Gergely’s family, who beat her to death in the place where the original rape took place.  (Antal doesn’t take part in this attack – indeed. he’s calling out anxiously for Katalin as she meets her fate.)

    There are some good things in Katalin Varga.  Tibor Pálffy as Antal gives a fine performance, by far the best in the film.  He conveys very well Antal’s quiet, stunned apprehension of the gradual and then inexorable dismantling of his life with Etelka (Melinda Kántor).  Strickland gets you guessing in the early stages when the story is set.  It’s hard to tell from the way the characters are dressed and where they live; the simple, rustic life that Strickland then begins to sketch out suggests the past.  As soon as we see Zgismond’s computer, we know otherwise but Strickland throughout the film sustains an intriguing contrast between the occasional appearance of modern technology and the wide open, relatively timeless physical landscape of the story (which he manages to make both peaceful and ominous), and the folk songs which the characters occasionally sing.  I liked the way too that he established the structure of Katalin’s and Orbán’s journey (they stay overnight in a succession of different farm buildings) – and Katalin’s brief encounter with two teenage girls, who laugh at her wanting to go to a village which they see as the middle of nowhere.  And the point at which the flashback ends is cleverly, surprisingly placed:  you’ve assumed that virtually the entire action will lead up to the scene with which the film began.  Katalin’s death at the hands of two men – one taking the lead, the other looking on – clearly resonates with the circumstances of her rape; and the blow that kills her recalls how she killed Gergely.  Yet it’s this patterning that feels unpleasantly contrived and limits the interest of the film.  I think Katalin Varga would be better – and the sense of the heroine’s (and Antal’s) predicament made more powerfully claustrophobic – if Katalin, realising there’s no way back to her old life with Zgismond, had stayed on with the newly-widowed Antal, thus returning Orbán to his natural father.

    As Katalin, Hilda Péter is a strong presence but she’s too eager to hold the screen and does so in ways that are mostly obvious and occasionally confusing.  She sometimes looks seductive when this doesn’t seem natural in the context.  In theory, that quality could make the whole story deeper and more complex but it’s hard to see how it makes sense when Katalin is looking significantly at her young son (who is looking down) as they eat a meal together. Since Katalin is otherwise presented as an unqualified victim and as a woman whose desire for revenge has become the motive force of her existence, the suggestive looks come to seem nothing more than the actress’s way of imposing herself.  Péter is not very expressive in the early exchange with Zgismond after he’s discovered her long-held secret:  she doesn’t seem sufficiently distressed (or even oddly relieved).  The most striking sequence is certainly the one in which Katalin, Antal and Etelka go out in a rowing boat – the husband and wife side by side, Katalin in the stern seat – and she recounts the rape in detail.  But neither Hilda Péter nor Strickland finds a satisfactory solution to the matter of how Katalin looks at Antal and Etelka as she tells her terrible story.  Her gaze seems to move from one to the other but Péter maintains a coolly controlled gloating look throughout (with not much going on behind her eyes).  Although he occasionally cuts to Antal looking increasingly worried, Strickland’s elision of Etelka’s reactions is evasive.  Since she finds out the truth only by eavesdropping on a conversation between Katalin and Antal later that evening, we need to know how she receives what Katalin is saying in the boat.

    There are other scenes in the film that left me puzzled.  En route to the village where she means to avenge herself, Katalin calls her friend back at home and says that she doesn’t want Orbán to know the real purpose of their journey.  The son is shown in the foreground with Katalin on her mobile in the background.  You naturally infer that he can hear what she’s saying – yet there’s no follow-up, even though Orbán is a boy who, at other times, asks an awkward question whenever he feels the need.   (And when Katalin says, in the same phone conversation, ‘I have to pay some men a surprise visit’, the statement sounds too conventionally melodramatic.)  Strickland shoots the killing of Gergely in a way that makes it hard to see what’s going on:  this is effective in suggesting Katalin’s burning, blurred experience of the moment but it’s less than clear, given their physical positions, how she overpowers him – or, more important, how she would be confident of overpowering him in deciding to kill him this way.   When she meets Antal, Katalin barely reacts to this amazing chance encounter.  Even if that’s because she believes that her quest for revenge is divinely guided (which seems to be implied at one stage), it’s surprising that she doesn’t register, at least in private, a feeling of vindication.

    13 October 2009

  • Being There

    Old YorkerFilm review

    Hal Ashby (1979)

    In a town house in Washington DC, a middle-aged man (Peter Sellers) wakes up.  The television in his room is already on, with an orchestra playing a Schubert symphony.  The man looks briefly at the screen before getting out of bed.  He rearranges some potted plants in the room then moves into an arbour, where there are more plants and another television, although this one has bad reception and nothing to see on screen but a juddering snowstorm.  Returning to his bedroom, the man switches channels from the orchestra performance to a cartoon show.  A woman, also middle-aged, comes in to tell him that their elderly employer has died.  She is Louise, the cook, and the man we’ve been watching is Chance, the gardener.  Soon afterwards, lawyers in charge of the estate evict him from the property, where he’s lived all his life.   Chance leaves the premises.  He wears a suit, an overcoat and a bowler hat – hand-me-downs from his late employer.  He carries a suitcase and rolled umbrella.  He walks down a main road and into the city centre.  He stops outside a TV shop where he’s drawn to an image of himself, captured on camera on one of the screens in the shop window.  Stepping back from the pavement, Chance is struck by a chauffeur-driven car.  He’s not seriously hurt but the woman in the back of the car insists on taking him to her home to recover.  Her name is Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine).  During the car journey, Eve offers Chance a drink.  Unused to alcohol, it makes him cough; when Eve asks his name, he splutters out ‘Chance, the gardener’, which Eve mishears as ‘Chauncey Gardiner’.

    That name and Chance’s outfit (his tailored suit is from the 1930s) denote a gentleman of the old school.  At least, this is how Eve’s husband, the business mogul Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas), immediately sees him.  Rand is impressed too by the simple, unassuming words that Chance speaks – so much so that, when he receives a visit next day from the US President (Jack Warden), Rand has Chance sit in on the meeting.  In language befitting the job he’s done for many years, Chance tells the President, who is desperate for reassurance on his administration’s economic policy, that ‘As long as the roots are not severed, all is well – and all will be well in the garden’.  Chance goes on to say that:

    ‘In the garden, growth has its seasons.  First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter.  And then we get spring and summer again.’

    The President instantly transmutes Chance’s gardening insights into political rhetoric.  (He appears to write his own speeches.)  From this point onwards, Chance’s rise is meteoric.  He appears on national television, offering similar words of wisdom.  His background is a mystery but Chance soon becomes a popular, respected and highly distinctive figure in the media commentariat.  He’s also an increasingly prominent member of the Rands’ household.  Ben Rand is a dying man (he has aplastic anaemia); he tells his much younger wife that it would be good for her to become close to Chance.  Eve needs no encouragement.  Already attracted to Chance, she tries to seduce him.  A romantic scene is on the television in his room as she does so; Chance, although he has no sexual experience, responds to Eve by imitating the kissing he sees on the screen.  When he tells her that ‘I like to watch’, she thinks he’s admitting a liking for voyeurism rather than television and she starts to masturbate to please him.   She doesn’t notice that Chance stops looking at her and transfers his attention back to the screen.  Ben Rand dies.  The President delivers the address at his funeral but, as they carry Rand’s coffin to its final resting place, his pallbearers – other high-ranking figures in their party’s political hierarchy – agree that, if they are to win the next presidential election, Chauncey Gardiner is the only possible candidate.  Chance, meanwhile, wanders round Rand’s estate.  He comes to and stops at a lake.   He goes a few paces across its surface, pauses, and tests the depth with his umbrella.  He continues on his way, walking on water.

    Being There was adapted for the screen by Robert C Jones and Jerzy Kosiński, from the latter’s 1970 novella.  In the event, Kosiński insisted on being given the sole screenwriting credit (I’ll therefore blame him alone in what follows).  The satirical premise of the piece is that the simple-minded Chance, who’s spent his life doing nothing but tending his employer’s garden and watching television, is welcomed as a seer and a breath of political fresh air, through a combination of the two elements of his modus vivendi.  His horticultural bromides make him a different voice.  (I didn’t quite get this since the President immediately hijacks Chance’s words for his own political purposes.)  But Chance is also a media and, especially, a television celebrity.  The society that Kosiński presents may be weary of conventional political discourse but it’s nonetheless in thrall to what it sees on the TV screen.

    Is Chance a tabula rasa or a sponge?  It depends, on what is more convenient to Jerzy Kosiński at each point of the script.  Chance retains things from television if Kosiński doesn’t want to waste time having him enlightened.  His brain is a sieve if his ignorance is judged to help the comedic cause (even though it rarely does).  For example, on his arrival at the Rands’ mansion, Chance doesn’t understand what an elevator is, though he must have seen one many times on screen.  A bit later on, he isn’t able to use a telephone.  The same as-it-suits inconsistency governs his social behaviour.  When he says at a society gathering that he can’t read or write, the Washington glitterati are astonished by his candour and assume that he means something profound by these words.  Chance is as likely, however, to say something conventionally polite – whenever his doing otherwise would get in Jerzy Kosiński’s way.  No one ever comments on the resonance between the sound of Chauncey Gardiner’s surname and his preferred metaphors.  The ‘I like to watch’ joke is used twice – one use less would have been one too many.  There are things that aren’t followed through.  For instance, Louise (Ruth Attaway), an African American, complains to her friends and family that Chance’s rise to public prominence proves there’s one law for WASPS in good suits and another for working-class blacks.  Since Louise – unlike the press and television – knows who Chance really is, why doesn’t she try and sell her story?  (If the media rejected it this would vindicate Louise’s claims of racism.)

    Hal Ashby’s direction makes matters worse.  If he had zipped along, the pace would have aligned with Kosiński’s brisk, obvious satire and the film might have been crudely entertaining.  But Being There proceeds cautiously, as if the story Ashby is telling was realistic and intricately plotted, and the viewer needed time to assimilate its complexities.  The movie is beautifully shot by Caleb Deschanel:  the often magical quality of the lighting might be seen as reflecting the viewpoint of Chance – his seeing a freshly-minted world for the first time, outside the walled garden and the box room of his previous life.  But this clashes with the film’s tone of caustic condemnation of the world into which he’s moved.  Being There’s impression of depth – which a faster-moving, more overtly comical treatment might have lacked – is entirely superficial.  It isn’t subtle; it’s just sluggish.  Hal Ashby includes a load of TV clips.  These are mostly meant to illustrate the vacuity of small-screen fare but come across as filler for a big-screen story that’s very thin.

    It’s hard to accept that a society whose minds the noxious influence of television has turned to mush would be enraptured by a drab patrician; or that the likes of Ben Rand and the President would infer from his démodé get-up and good manners that Chance is a man of social and moral distinction.  Even if you accept this premise, Peter Sellers’s Chance doesn’t quite fit the bill.  One of the few interesting things in Julian Petley’s introduction to Being There at BFI was a reference to Sellers’s appearance on The Muppet Show in 1978, when, Petley said, Kermit encouraged Sellers to ‘just be yourself’ and Sellers replied this would be impossible because, ‘I don’t have a self – I had it surgically removed’.  It’s true that the people Sellers created on screen seemed like ingenious confections rather than to draw on an underlying personality.  This is most remarkably the case with his work in Stanley Kubrick films – not only playing multiple roles in Dr Strangelove but also in Lolita, where Sellers’s brilliant Clare Quilty, Humbert Humbert’s nemesis, is more a figment of anxious imagination than a human being.

    Chance in Being There soon came to be seen as perhaps Sellers’s definitive role – partly because the character is sui generis, partly because it was virtually his last appearance[1].  The performance is certainly striking but Sellers doesn’t suggest vacancy or anonymity:  he gives the impression of working to achieve blank simplicity.  His quiet, deliberate monotone comes across as odd rather than as an expression of old-world courtesy.  (Alec Guinness would have been a better Chance.  He was Sellers’s senior by fifteen years but Chance’s age doesn’t matter much in the imprecise satirical frame of Kosiński’s story – and the role was offered first to Laurence Olivier, who was seven years older than Guinness.)  Sellers’s strongest moments come when he registers emotion rather than an absence of emotion – for example, when Ben Rand dies and Chance’s eyes fill with tears – and these moments are strong simply because they’re different.   There’s occasionally fear in Chance’s eyes too:  it’s hard to tell if this is the character’s apprehensions of isolation and emptiness, or the actor’s.  Sellers supposedly underwent a crisis of confidence about his ability to play Chance.  It would be ironic if – in his last major role, as an empty vessel – he was partly expressing a self that he told a Muppet he no longer had.

    Shirley MacLaine does her best to rise above her demeaning role as Eve but Being There livens up only when Melvyn Douglas, as Ben Rand, is on screen.  Douglas makes you nearly believe that this shrewd, powerful old man is so scared by the imminence of death that he wants to – has to – find something salvational in Chance.  Douglas himself looks ill (he died in 1981) but his timing here is superb.  In this role, he also, in effect, makes fun of his own tendency towards pomposity as an actor (in his later years anyway – in Billy Budd, Hud and I Never Sang for My Father).  The meeting of Chance, Ben Rand and the President in Rand’s library was the only scene, I felt, in which Being There came to satirical life.  Jack Warden is very good:  he gives the President an amusingly insecure sense of authority and does fine, split-second double-takes as he listens to Chance.  The later bits that illustrate the President’s problems in bed with the First Lady are a crummy idea and seem to belong to a different kind of movie, even worse than Being There.

    23 November 2015

    [1] Being There was Sellers’s last film released during his lifetime.  He died in July 1980, a couple of weeks before the release of The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu.  Blake Edwards’s The Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) comprised entirely scenes shot for earlier Pink Panther films and previously unused.

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