And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground There are certain people of whom it is difficult to say anything which will at once throw them into relief—in other words, describe them graphically in their typical characteristics. These are they who are generally known as “commonplace people,” and this class comprises, of course, the immense majority of mankind. Authors, as a rule, attempt to select and portray types rarely met with in their entirety, but these types are nevertheless more real than real life itself. For instance, when the whole essence of an ordinary person’s nature lies in his perpetual and unchangeable commonplaceness; and when in spite of all his endeavours to do something out of the common, this person ends, eventually, by remaining in his unbroken line of routine—. I think such an individual really does become a type o...
Taxidermia (2006)
Taxidermia is Hungarian filmmaker’s Gyorgy Pálfi’s second feature film. Grandfather, father, son. War, communism, post-communism. Lust, gluttony, vanity. Three generations, three eras, three sins. All tales wrapped up in surrealism and scatology. To each generation corresponds one era, to each era, one sin. To each of the three parts, punishments. The film is introduced by a voice-over that ends with the following statement: “If something is coming to an end, then its beginning is also important”. We are soon to discover the beginning of the story of these three damned generations which are entranced in Hungarian History.
Gyorgy Palfi who five years ago gave us Hukkle, or Hiccups, an elegantly odd, or perhaps oddly elegant quasi-silent comedy about strange goings-on in a remote village. Now, in conventional narrative terms, he has expanded his range and ambition and given us a bizarre and intricately interrelated magic-realist parable with a literary feel. It concerns the nightmarish squalor encoded in one unfortunate man's DNA: a genetic narrative that unfolds over three generations, or rather degenerations. Inspecting the details of this movie will allow you to see how they inter-connect. However, inspecting them may also make you want to clamp your hand over your mouth and run out into the cinema foyer, heading for the lavatories.
Csaba Czene is the grandfather, Morosgovanyi, a sexually frustrated army orderly in the second world war. Gergo Trocsanyi is his son Balatony, a grotesquely obese speed-eater who is part of the postwar Hungarian team promoting this national sport. Finally there is Balatony's son Lajos, played by the German actor Marc Bischoff: a lonely taxidermist obsessed with the ultimate challenge.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/jul/13/comedy.drama
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- Release date: August 14, 2009 (USA)Director: György PálfiDistributed by: Regent Releasing, Memento FilmsBased on: short stories; by Lajos Parti Nagy
- Release date: August 14, 2009 (USA)Director: György PálfiDistributed by: Regent Releasing, Memento FilmsBased on: short stories; by Lajos Parti Nagy
