Thanks to the fine folks at UW Cinematheque, I got to see Twilight, the 1990 film by Hungarian director György Fehér, last week. Fehér was a consort of fellow Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr whom I know by reputation only. Twilight received little, if any, distribution here in the States, upon release so it's had lost classic status amongst cinephiles. But it's been resurrected with a shiny new 4K print and it looks like it got a bluray release as well.
The story concerns a detective who, shortly before retirement, lands the case of a murdered girl out in a rural area. We begin with an aerial shot of seemingly endless forest stretching out to mountains in the distance and this along with the premise of a dead girl brought Twin Peaks to mind but that's where the comparison ends. That the detective, whose name I don't recall ever being mentioned, is near retirement, made me think of Danny Glover's Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon. But that's just free form cinema association in action.
After the arboreal opening, we see two men in the back of a car as it rumbles on its way to the scene of the crime. Lovely black and wide photography has the men's faces shrouded in shadow while the view out the rear window provides light but no clue as to the setting. The detective gets out and into a good soaking rain where he is informed that the body of a girl was found up the hill near a cross. Rather than cut to the car's exterior, the camera remains in the front seat so we get a view of everyone's torso, but no faces nor legs, as seen through the passenger door window.
I have read that cinematographer Miklós Gurbán supervised this 35mm to 4K digital transfer and that details in darker spaces that film could capture were largely lost when going digital. Score one for analog. I wondered if the men's faces in this scene were more visible on film and if something was lost in the 4K realm.
Anyway, this is a fairly long take with a generous amount of time devoted to the car ride itself. We then see the crime scene from afar with a crowd presumably gathered around the girl's body. The detective emerges from the mass of people and ambles towards the camera which is slowly - very slowly being lowered down to meet him at eye level as he passes it.
This opening sequence provides a template for the rest of the film with its long takes, a camera that often moves slowly and gently, and characters that are usually never in a hurry to provide grist for the plot mill, to justify going from scene A to scene B. The detective doesn't say, "Let's go talk to the family" or "I am going to go to the girl's school". Fehér just moves us from one spot to another and leaves it to us to figure out where we've landed and exactly why.
Several scenes stand out such as one early on when the detective approaches what we learn is the home of the dead girl's family. As he creeps closer, we hear a woman's wailing which is hard to distinguish from forced laughter. He hovers outside a window and we peer inside as his partner informs the parents of their daughter's death. The distraught couple grab onto the guy issuing their emotional demands of wanting to see their daughter's body and that the policeman find the killer. It's an emotionally charged scene but one we witness only by an act of voyeurism, essentially - through that window.
One of the girl's friends from school is interviewed and this provides a clue. However, it's a rather usettling scene with the boy's face in closeup, looking at his interlocutor uncomfortably, and whispering that the dead girl would meet "the giant" by the cross. The detective then breaks into the school and finds a drawing of this giant.
This interview is echoed in a later one with a girl. It's a very disturbing scene that creepily bordered on 9½ Weeks as it felt like a seduction as much as an inquiry as the detective - not the detective - caresses the girl's face and feeds her chocolate.
Aside from the detective, no one puts any stock into the giant character. Everyone is fingering the village peddler who was busted previously for attacking a girl or attempting to seduce one - I cannot recall exactly. He is interrogated and there's this ominous shot where the camera shows us the scene inside the building where the cops are doing their work and then it slowly tracks left to a window where we see a crowd of people outside, presumably come to seek justice.
But instead of wielding torches and pitchforks, they just stand there in the rain, silent and unmoving like zombies. They're almost as dead as the girl they mourn.
At one point, a fellow who is the region's coroner, I guess you'd say, tells our detective that his search is futile. "...you will never find him." Prophetic words as he never does. The killer remains an enigma.
The striking black and white cinematography was complemented by an equally stunning soundtrack. There's this low, cthonic rumble in the background in many scenes. It was perturbing and made me feel as if the world of the film was beset by a primal evil, that malice flowed through the ley lines there. Choral sounds provided an ethereal counterpoint that was no less moving.
I'm not sure what to make of Twilight. Fehér's Hungary was moving away from Communism at the time he made this film and I highly suspect that there's something of the anxiety Hungarians surely felt then here as well as some kind of reckoning with the country's Communist past.
Guesswork on my part? To be sure. Regardless, Twilight is an intriguing film. It is beautifully shot and its slow pace imbues a sense of realism to it while other elements, such as some of the characters' actions, betray a sense of exaggerated unreality. Twilight felt very contemplative but it never became dour for me. There is passion here but it's not always presented in a way we are familiar with. While I don't doubt I am missing a lot not being Hungarian, I still appreciated the detective's steadfastness when bowing to futility was all too easy. Just as he never conceded his duty because of a sense it was useless, I never felt lulled into tedium because of the movie's slow pace and lack of helpful clues that would lead to an arrest. It is a beautiful, moody puzzle that was a joy to fail to piece together.
No comments:
Post a Comment