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
