Kontroll [2003] [DVD]

I found this film totally by mistake. I was working away from home and woke in the wee small hours feeling unwell. Not being able to get back to sleep I stuck on the TV - and this had just started. I was transfixed from start to end. Kontroll is a visual feast, a film that defies you to pigeon-hole it. One minute it is straight out slapstick comedy, at the next breathless turn it is a surreal fantasy, all of a sudden we change tracks to dark horror and finally terminate with even a smidgen of romance. The creativity of the people who made this film is amazing - that the story of some shabby ticket inspectors on the Budapest underground could hold your attention and entertain you for an entire film is almost too much to believe. But this film achieves it and so much more. A brilliant achievement. And all we could manage in Britain was "Creep" - shame on us.

A dark look at the Budapest Underground based around a group of ticket inspectors. The script and acting is superb but it is the direction, sound and camera work that stands out for me. The film captures the extremes of character that can be found in this interesting city and does make you wonder about standing on the edge of the platform at night. Rather than relying of blood and guts it plays well on the imagination. It also mixes very well comedy and fear so you are never quite sure what will happen next. The Hungarian version of the film comes with a introduction that the characters bear nor resemblance to the hard working staff of the Budapest Underground. However the inspectors in Budapest do go around looking much like those in the film and suddenly whip their arm bands. I have met one pair who were a couple of middle aged ladies with their shopping and another pair that looked like they would have no trouble with Mike Tyson. In this film fiction is only a little stranger than fact. It is my all time top ten and it is well worth watching a few times.

Here we have a little gem of a movie; an art house creation from Hungary, written as a black comedy about a group of ticket inspectors working the (probably) Budapest underground. Doesn't sound particularly promising, does it? Well, I think it's wonderful.

Bulscu (Sándor Csányi) and his four colleagues (Zoltán Mucsi, Zsolt Nagy, Csaba Pindroch and Sándor Badár) eke a thankless living collecting tickets on the underground. They have to cope with recalcitrant passengers, football hooligans, vandals, dangerous rivalries with other ticket teams and a serial killer who's modus operandi is to creep up behind a commuter and push him or her in front of an approaching train (you'll pay just a little more attention to that old request that you 'mind the gap' next time you use the underground!). That's pretty much it as far as plot goes. Bulscu adds rather more to the story; a tortured soul, he eats and sleeps down below and never sees the light of day (we never really find out why) and falls in love with a mysterious young woman (Eszter Balla) who, for some unexplained reason, travels the metro dressed as a teddy-bear and never buys a ticket. Indeed there is rather a lot that director/writer Nimród Antal never explains, but none of that really matters.

What you have here is more of a directorial exercise, a character study, a collage of funny, exciting or moving cameos rather than a tightly plotted, meaningful, A-to-C-via-B journey. All the actors play their roles to perfection; funny, pathetic, sociopathic misfits (are they even acting?) and each scene delivers it's laughs, thrills, romance or pathos with mastery and no little heart. The harsh, fluorescent-tube lighting and the grubby, echoing qualities of the metro are used masterfully to develop a surreal, almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere and, because the outside world is barely hinted at, the setting has (I'm stealing shamelessly from other reviewers here) a wierd through-the-looking-glass feel to it that defines the movie.

Overall, it's an enigmatic, rambling, almost pointless movie. Well, almost: having watched it again, the ending has a bit of a Shawshank Redemption vibe to it. However, watching the film is mostly like sitting on a bench in an underground station watching the travellers; where have they come from? where are they going? why are they travelling? is it day or night outside? rainy or sunny? Fascinating and compelling; so many unanswered questions.

Much as I love the film, though, what clinched it for me was what has to be one of the most charmingly delivered disclaimers ever committed to film: the "head" of the Budapest Metro reads, rather woodenly, from his clipboard that, while he is proud to support this young Bulgarian director (a good friend, even though they only met recently), "all events and characters are fictional" and don't reflect on his beloved Metro system. Fantastic.

Oh yeah: and if you don't believe me, you can find the "chase scene" on YouTube and if that doesn't convince you, nothing will.