Kontroll Movie Review:


A representative specimen is separated for dissection, in miniature, of the outside group. Microcosm mirrors macrocosm, and society at large is effectively considered on the small, physically quarantined stage, aboard ship or on an island, in a small town or specialized community. But, one of twenty-five features at the current New Directors/New Films presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, Nimród Antal’s brilliant comic-twist “Kontroll” images a bizarre realm so insular that it defies all temptation to read in specific social commentary.

Southern Californian by birth and upbringing, the director did not move to Hungary until his early twenties, and after film school, commercials and music videos there, wrote this his first screenplay, for his début feature, from observing Toilet Ladies and Ticket Inspectors, “two professions completely unknown to me in America.” The hundred-six-minute film goes on a little long for its own good, its glary neon-blue is realistic but tires the eye, and some bits are overly spelled out, but these expected mistakes are more than made up for by originality, macabre humor, pathos, and spot-on characters.

A man reads from a clipboard. A recent acquaintance of the young director’s, he must convey Budapest subway authority’s message that what is to follow is “of the universal” and in no way reflects on actual employees of the world’s second oldest underground system. Sotto voce, he disagrees and believes the public will catch the obvious symbolism. Whichever way, two spookily long escalators convey the cameraeye down into the great depths and away from natural light. (Alongside them, two others ascend, while in the final scene, all four subtly go up.)

This is the subterranean domain of the Inspectors, low-level officials in armbands and black leather who board trains for unannounced spot checks to catch and fine turnstile jumpers. Naturally the “Controllers” are unpopular and, along with an assortment of urban kooks -- a stutterer, a pimp with his stable, drunks and punks, an effusive gay guy -- run into abuse that not infrequently goes beyond the merely verbal. On top of this is the intense competition among these four-or-five-man or –woman crews of inspectors, each seeking respect and safer assignment sectors and currying favor with harried dispatchers and the ominous suits (“Here comes the Gestapo!”) who represent faceless Authority.

Scruffily attractive Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi) heads up the least effective, most scorned group of hilarious but sad misfits. Personally, he is pitted against rival crew chief Gonzó (Balázs Lázár) in a battle for face that includes a deadly game of “chicken” on inter-station rails, and as a group they are challenged by Bootsie the Sprayer (Bence Mátyássy), a nimble Walkman’d youth who thumbs his nose at fruitless pursuit, and by the Bergmanesque Shadow, a serial pusher-in-front-of-incoming trains.

Sleeping against platform posts or among twisted machinery in surrealistically lit repair areas, Bulcsú looks upwards into shafts of surface light but remains forever in this sheltered retreat. Pleasant enough but truly at ease only with motorman Béla (Lajos Kovács), he is in denial of something, retreating from the beginnings of a successful life hinted at by passenger Feri (János Kulka), who recognizes him and eagerly invites him back into the business.

Love to the rescue, the normally confident hero is tongue-tied confronting a proudly non-ticketed young Sofie (Eszter Balla) in a quirkily ridiculous, baggy-bottomed bear suit which more resembles a rabbit. She will turn out to be connected and not so brazenly daring as all that, and, among his driver’s cabin ikons, votive candles and nimbus, Uncle Béla “look[s] like an angel” to counterbalance the black-hooded killer angel of death. Powers That Be need a scapegoat, and rebellious Bulcsú fits the bill, but though some companions turn on him, and despite an irrelevant underground discothèque party, he will be led back into life and light by a Sofie metamorphosed from moldy bear-behind to ethereal winged Tinkerbell.

Certain correspondences are excessively underlined, but on the whole Antal leaves enough of his film open-ended to give room for thinking. This mature début is delicate, in the sense that its zany differentness would be cloying to repeat, and with luck the thirty-three-year-old will now go on to use his talents to explore in other directions.



Donald Levit

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