László Strausz Life is somewhere else!

Tamás Sas: Bad Boys

The Szacsa Fraternity
The Szacsa Fraternity
57 KByte

Making a description or diagnosis which is authentic from social, political and sociological aspects has certain requirements, the ignorance of which may simply make even topical stories seem false. The concentration of real-life experiences into the characters is probably the most important artistic tool of the genre, through which the characters' system of motifs and the prime mover of their actions will become sensible. So that a masterpiece be able to transmit a well-articulated opinion about current social relations, which continuously change and develop, it should step over large patterns of model-value, which tend to oversimplify and get stuck in the dual system of the Good and the Bad. If the place value of a character is forced to extremes by every possible descriptive method, it finally becomes sterile, and translucent, becoming incapable of fulfilling the function, for the sake of which it has come alive: the depiction of a living character, recognisable for all! Unfortunately, in Bad Boys, the new film by Tamás Sas, the typical figures or relationships of our time fail to flash through. All I can see is a conventional world, which strenuously tries to look up-to-date.

The powers of darkness and light clash on the stage of a small town, while the struggle itself is sharpened to extremes in the story of inmates of the local young custody centre. In this small town, a militant sports teacher is pushing himself hard towards political power, to grab the position of the mayor, with the principle of "less than a political change, but more than a government change" on his banner. His small group, the commando of the young custody centre, which our hero is also a member of, is assisting him in his intentions, although unintentionally. We just cannot conceive why he, the best of the bad boys, who even happen to be innocent, is punished for his brother's crime? Why does he accept the punishment? How did he get here? The plot, the script does not bother to waste time on giving any explanation.

Parables, however, have really decisive power if the depicted world, the major structures or characters of the story do not exist merely to point towards the demonstrated value. The lack of credible situations and real action patterns makes even the theoretically acceptable moral statement as thin as flimsy. Nevertheless, Bad Boys insists to press the lesson through: power and violence cannot be separated! Violence is unacceptable, so is power! Communities based on dictatorial and authoritarian values are necessarily violent communities! The message (yes, Sas acts in a rather didactic way!) should stand in the focus of the action! All this is really nice, but as if the characters were standing in front of a background, acting in a story, which has nothing to do with them at all. Therefore, reality which it aims to target with its criticism, slips away from under the parable: if the actor is not authentic, it becomes completely indifferent, whether he may seek to model real social problems or conflicts.

The sujet is based upon functional elements, narrative Lego-cubes. Due to his pure goodness and innocence (basic situation), our hero finds himself in opposition with the rest of the inmates in the young custody centre (conflict). Meanwhile, his blossoming love for a civilian girl would point towards his survival (delay), but the fall is unavoidable and predictable (tragic ending): trapped in the front-line of this game of power, he is beaten to death by his own comrades. Well-well, faith becomes the victim of dark powers!

Sas's story building makes use of the classic structure, which in itself would not do any harm to the film; the fact, however, that the actors are unable to breath life into the story seems to be a bigger deficiency. The characters who strive to be topical at any expense, and within whom the viewers should recognise their contemporary public equivalent, are sweating in effort, which makes it impossible for the characters to appear in the story as credible figures. Our identification is eased by numerous cultural and political icons. But when the social idol Ganxsta Zolee turns up as the prophet of crime, we immediately feel that Sas is even ready to chew the food for us in advance. A pop star, whose musical career is rather untruthful, but who could so successfully make Hungarian consumers believe that gangster rap does exist in Angyalföld and managed to get into the front-line of Hungarian popular music riding the fashionable wave of violence, is only a showman, and as such, he is incapable of interpreting any real message - apart from himself. It is probably Zolee who regrets most that the reality of his performance is but the existence of the overseas example, which he adopted without any hesitation. In Hungary, however, the cloven hoof is showing. It would not matter a bit, if he appeared in the film only as Zoltán Gangster himself, but the director of the film also gave him a narrative function, that of the gang leader and rapper … (I suppose, everybody notices that first, Zoli is arrested, later he gives a concert in the Sports Hall.) Numerous associations are attached to such a well-known figure, so it is not too fortunate for him to appear on the screen both as a singer and an actor. Nevertheless, it is the Hungarian rapper who passes the judgement on the methods of local tyrants, which makes prophecies out of his visionary lyrics, just like all of his video clips. Another telling model situation!

The phenomenon of addressing snappish remarks at politics or flipping the political power with refined methods, which was so characteristic of the Hungarian and in the broader sense of Eastern European films in the communist era, have by now lost its force as a narrative situation and would be completely senseless to call to account. Yet, in the film we feel that Sas has visibly no tools to be able to express his ideas in a politically more sophisticated manner. Regardless of our political preferences, we feel tense at the cinema when we see that the director is making political statements with the help of clumsy look-alikes of contemporary political figures.

Striving to record the lumpy Hungarian reality on a celluloid Bad Boys forgets about several basic principles. The film takes the audience for a fool, which they never like too much, but all this would be a pardonable crime if the film itself were credible. The purified, bleached characters, however, represent nothing. The boxing match of the Good and the Bad is yet again postponed!

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