Starting In A Way With Kontroll
Topic: The one film I’d like to watch again for the very first time, suggested by Alasdair Stuart.
Kontroll, a 2003 Hungarian film, about ticket collectors on the Budapest underground, directed by Nimród Antal, who you might recognise as the guy that directed the more recent (and more mainstream) Vacancy. Which I forgot to see. Because I am one of the special people. Did anyone see it? Is it any good?
Yeah, really, Kontroll. There are others I could pick, more mainstream choices. Pi. Sunshine. The Prestige. But I was asked to pick one, and that’s my choice. I know what it looks like - an obscure foreign language movie, the one film I want to watch again for the first time. How fucking pretentious. So, at the outset I should make it clear: this is not my typical viewing. I’m much more likely to watch Hollywood blockbusters than foreigh arthouse stuff. Not out of any sort of prejudice against arthouse stuff - I do like a reasonable percentage of what I’ve seen in that vein. But cinema’s not a medium I’m particularly passionate about, so I don’t tend to seek out its fringes. So, yeah, it is an arthouse movie that I’m picking, but I want you to understand: this is not an attempt to make you think I’m a film buff, or that I watch hip underground movies, are am any cooler (or more pretentious) than I really am. It’s just that this really is the movie that first comes to mind when I think of a film I would love to see for the first time again.
Kontroll, then. What’s so special about it?
I’m not gong to talk about the plot here. Wikipedia has a basic description of the narrative, if you really feel you need one, but honestly, you’d be better off just getting hold of a copy and watching it.
Let’s start with the obvious stuff, then. Kontroll is visually, thematically and tonally so far up my street that it’s bought a house, and is unpacking the van right now.
Visually speaking, it’s beautifully shot. There isn’t a frame that isn’t a gorgeous composition, something I’d be happy to have taken as a photo. The entire film is set underground, under the artificial light. Shadows are deeper, colours are either more washed out, or more vivid, but never quite right. The whole thing looks a little grungy, as you’d expect a world underground to do. It lends the film a sense of heightened reality, reinforces the weird kind of magical realism of the whole thing.
Thematically, well, it might be about redemption. It may be about making peace with yourself. It could be about a struggle between good and evil. Perhaps it’s something else entirely. Me, I think it’s probably the second one, with elements of the first. It’s the sort of theme that I’m a complete sucker for.
And tonally, it’s blackly comic. There’s a sort of resigned humour, a dry appreciation of the world, and their place in it that comes off almost all the characters. I don’t know if it’s an Eastern European thing or what, but it sits very nicely with me sense of humour.
Oh, and while I think or it, I probably ought to mention the soundtrack. I’ve never managed to buy a copy, despite ordering it from several place - the order always gets cancelled, because the place I’m buying from can’t get it back in stock. But I have managed to start torrenting a copy while writing this, which is good news for me. It’s a techno soundtrack by an outfit called Neo, which ok, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, but it’s ace. It’s not as hard edged, as say, the Pi soundtrack, but it’s nice, tense, well used stuff that’ll do me nicely as background music while working, thanks very much.
But all that explains why I love the film. I doesn’t answer the question of why I’d love to watch it again for the first time.
Well, everyone I’ve ever known watch this film agrees on one thing. It’s very, very symbolic. Not necessarily of any one thing, or anything, but it’s very symbolic. Just watching it for the first time, in the cinema, I could think of at least three different things the movie could be about - the three I listed earlier. Every time I’ve watched it since, I’ve added something to that list, or realised how elements I hadn’t noticed before play back into those themes.
I love that in film - the idea that the audience itself can, are even expected to, bring something to the movie, to interpret it, rather than just watch it. The thing is, though, that, for me at least, there’s a line, it’s possible to go to far down the route of making things so open to interpretation that firstly, it’s next to fucking impossible to come up with my own coherent interpretation, and secondly, and more seriously, I’m not sure that the director (or writer, or both) know what they hell they’re saying. Kontroll, obviously, does not cross it. It never feels anything less than entirely coherent, and I remember sitting in the cinema, having no idea what to expect, and getting the utter rush of visual and auditory joy, along with plenty of mental stimulation, which is the thing that makes me want to go see it again.
And like I say, I don’t really watch much arthouse cinema, but that fact remains - when I find an arthouse film I like, it’s always, always superior to 99.9% of mainstream Hollywood product. I’m sure most people would say the same. Maybe I should make more of an effort to go see some arthouse stuff now and again. Anyone got any good recommendations?
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