Gabriella Gönczy: Film...

An interview with director András Surányi

András Surányi, director
András Surányi,
director
23 KByte

Mészöly's novel Film. was first published in 1976 and since then much has been written about it. How long have you been considering adaptation?

I first met the novel when it was published. Seeing how poetically Mészöly depicted the strange symbiosis, in which two old people live during the very last moments of their life had deeply moved me. Later Zoltán Huszárik also brought up the issue of the book, referring with subtlety to the allusions between Mészöly's novels and the film I had earlier produced Mozart and Salieri. I felt that the text included the noble act of the Master towards somebody who looks upon him and watches admiringly what he does. Making a film of it had already then occurred to me, although the problems of the genre somewhat deterred me. The novel makes use of the montage, time and concentration techniques of a film. It makes highly refined allusions (either by emphasis or distancing) even in descriptions, shots and image cuts. The question was where the momentum was, in which the literary (raw) material might be translated into present tense film language. Another question was whether I was capable of finding it, whether I was sensitive enough and whether I had sufficient experience of death to be able to find that moment. We worked on the script with Ilona Nagy and Edit Kőszegi and we decided to organise flash-back technique (which creates the historical background of the novel) into a present tense series of episodes in the film.

A series of actions which returns from the "lacking" to a sort of solution might, for instance, be regarded as a minimum of narrative. The "plot" of Mészöly's novel is the walking of two people towards a house on top of a hill. Therefore in this respect we cannot really talk about a plot.

That is right, but it would have been extremely risky to fabricate a story of the material here. First of all, because telling a story is really difficult. I think one of the basic problems of Hungarian film is related to the crux of story-telling. What makes us different from block-buster movies is that for some reason, we can tell a story only highly painstakingly, while the dumbest American movies reveal stereotypical stories with incredible confidence and perfection. The underlying danger of such films, however, is that they might wash the personality of the viewer into the construction made up by the creator of the film, so the viewer is not involved as an individual. I believe - that is what the book encouraged me to do and what I also encouraged all my co-authors for - that we should not force our view and opinion on the viewer with the didactics of story-telling; it is already in the focus of attention of different political powers, as well as the contemporary media. Therefore, we have chosen a different way. We can see the tiny episodes of vibrations and actions, and the viewer, the recipient, puts his own story together himself if he feels it prevailing.

The text applies three major layers. On the one hand we accompany the two old people strolling from Moszkva Square to their house in Csaba Street. The second layer of shooting the film has been present from the moment the second sentence is uttered, i.e. every motion of the old couple is accompanied with allusions of the film-makers. The third layer is the history of a murder chosen "at random", vanishing in the haze of distant times .

The key words here are "at random", both in terms of the novel and the film, since Mészöly consciously depicts the fortuitousness and the violence of highlighting all along. With this expression ("at random") in mind, we have built in contemporary moments beside and beyond the story of the two old people, which characterise a period, such as the relationship between the waiter and his girlfriend, the micro-world of the restaurant or the story of the telephoning man, his wife whom he had left over a decade ago and their son.
Mészöly believes that what we can sense and seize is but the fragment of the cluster of existing phenomena and the whole picture is made up of tiny pieces of mosaics. I suppose that in our modern, fragmented life, which has fallen into pieces, the confusion of values, our condition of being lost, our hesitation, our failures and successes can only be captured in several little episodes. If we were to stick these fragments back together, we should put a lot of different pieces of mosaics and frames in line to be able to express ourselves in at least one circle of credibility. We aimed at concentrating and reducing the story into places and a time frame, using the fewest possible tools. On the one hand, the episodes transmit signs of the environment, while on the other hand - since they are all flashes of a type of partnership - they might refer to a conflict in the old couple's life. So we tried to create this circle of motivation not through a mock historical sujet, but perhaps with a more psychic surface of a different layer.

"On an August evening I saw an old couple sauntering home along Csaba Street. The picture grabbed my attention so much that when I tried to write about them, a filter - the camera - got in the way without the least intention", wrote Mészöly of his novel. The narrator involved this filter in the fiction. According to his ideas, the tone of false "personality and factuality" will be completed by the recipient who will create real personality and factuality. How do you feel about the recipients of Film.?

Our intention was to find the limit, where although the camera is present, it does not terrorise the viewer. The composition, the silences and the performance of the actors indeed offer the opportunity for us to create the moments and the images ourselves. The camera is present in either the conscious or unconscious choice of the viewers; the camera aims to find the prolonged cut, during which they might add their own memories to the thoughts of Hédi Temessy and Iván Darvas. It also tries to reveal moments within the composition of the projected image which have been lost because they had long gone. Here what we see is the attitude of a writer and a film-maker, and I suppose we have a lot in common with Mészöly in this respect. We did not wish to declare anything or force our story on the reader or the viewer, or even terrorise the viewer with our compulsion to tell a story. Instead what we are saying is: "a plot looks something like this, these are the mosaics and maybe this is the world around us . We invite you to be our companion on this trip into the world of self-recognition and finding each other!" Now I am going to quote one of Mészöly's core sentences from the text he has brought with him: "The novel presupposes more of an image-reader, a viewer-reader, on whose supplements it strives to rely after he has been previously prepared." Which means that it is our basic need to have the viewer as a companion after presenting the pieces of the mosaics.

You have just pointed out that with its intrusive presence, the camera definitely observes. The relation between Mészöly's camera and the old couple, however, is more like an interrogation.

Simultaneously, the novel presents hesitant contemplation, as the method of approach, which involves flashing up faces and lives, but also shows how to manipulate the content of the meaning with factuality, and how we can enforce the recipient to accept things within an associative system, which we fail to understand and its correlations are not true - although they could be -, therefore the notion of "maybe" is born again. That is what we wanted to trace in the language of the film: the descriptive, prolonged images have a documentary value, their truth is revealed only when the viewer builds them into his own recognition. I believe this creates the basic tension of the text and that is the reason why Film . has deservedly become one of the most remarkable products of 20th century Hungarian literature.

How did you choose the performers?

It was absolutely unequivocal. I do not believe that in this film we act something out. We simply add our knowledge, our style and the performers' excellence will shine. And they are brilliant, wonderful artists indeed. I feel sorry for not having had the opportunity to involve other actors and actresses in the film-making or to add other episodes that would fascinate the viewer.

Thank you.

Iván Darvas and Hédi Temessy
Iván Darvas
and Hédi Temessy
46 KByte
Tamás Puskás and Juli Básti
Tamás Puskás
and Juli Básti
60 KByte

 

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