Frakk (popular cartoon in Hungary). vs. Shrek in South Park, a.k.a. as feelings begin to run high in the heart of the ghetto. No computer-animated feature film had been produced in Hungary prior to the screening of Nyócker!. In spite of an involuntary gap, Hungarian 3D computer animation made a successful, though not an excellent debut!
The world of Nyócker! is as if the competition pieces from a children’s drawing contents held among junkies had been put on display in the defecation-smelling alley of a ghetto-land in Budapest: 2D creations of a disturbed mind are wangling and tumbling, but mostly swearing in the 3D „playground” decorated with concrete tables and dying trees. In the spirit of the box-hit recipe book of the TV-series, South Park, the heroes of our story are middle-school students growing up among typical local figures (Gypsy voivodes, dubious entrepreneurs, prostitutes, crooked cops, big-breasted teachers and a bunch of stray alcoholics), all excelling talents carrying the hallmark of each and every deviation of contemporary Hungarian society owing to their miserable place of residence and quality of life: they are doing drugs, bribing, swearing and, above all, living all their perversions to the fullest. The creators are quick to pinpoint at the very beginning of the plot through presenting a swift-tongued Gypsy-Hungarian dialog between grown-up characters that the forthcoming 90 minutes will be no stage for verbal preciosity, ethnic bias or prudery. Naturally, the child characters of the film utter their joy and sorrow packed in slang with the same blunt honesty as the grown-ups, they all curse the ancestry of the others, while the street laws easily overcome legal regulations that are elastic anyway.
An interesting connection can be observed between the technical implementation of Nyócker! and the structure of the film’s script: both are combinations seemingly stylistic feat, sortments from the armoury of competition for the countenance of audiences. The blending of the conventional paper maché process and 3D computer graphics is a daring experiment since in the absence of sufficient cohesion, it may easily happen that the eyes of the audience will see the weakness of the two techniques, yet the creators took the risk and even raised the stakes by choosing a substance of unrivalled mixed origin for this novel form. Viktor Nagy and László Jakab Orsós, the scriptwriters of the film bravely picked from the achievements of Hungarian popular film awaiting its rebirth, that is they compiled their favourite motifs and characters without any heartache from directors ranging from Szőke to Herendi, then adapted them to the mixed ethnicity and heated emotional climate of the 8th District in Budapest.
Colourful Icing
Since Billy Wilder, we know that the bitter pill of severe societal issues should be made to swallow with sweet icing, that is the presence of domestic violence, racism and corruption reaches the conscience of socially less sensitive viewers more easily if hidden between ghetto tunes and curse words instead of constructing the backbone of the storyline from solid department head truths and crime stats. In plain words, Nyócker! is an issue film, an account of the life of the most diverse and yet most neglected district of Budapest packed in colourful icing, the pathological findings educating viewers in emphatic and tolerant entertainment by exploring the layers of truth behind the phenomenon instead of ridiculing the lifestyle habits of Romany minority struggling with integration issues through its politically incorrect – as opposed to the shallow „Gypsy-imitating” acrobatics of Irigy Hónaljmirigy (a Hungarian travesty band). In the spirit of the works of the Farrelly brothers (There’s Something About Mary!, Me, Myself & Irene, Stuck on You) and of Stone and Parker renowned for South Park, the creative staff of Nyócker! promotes a minority group fighting windmills to equal contestants, as a result of which, not only the „deviations” of minority become the focal points of gag crackers, but the society-wise warranted interest-enforcing techniques of the suppressing majority are also receive a new angle. In the world of Gauder and his crew, the bodybuilder CIA agent is just as pathetically ridiculous as the pub-mischief Gypsy voivode, the cocaine-addict pimp, the crooked cops toiling and moiling with surveillance cameras, Hungary’s political elite, world-leaders or the paedophile pastor for that matter. The grown-up world of da ‘hood (Józsefváros – Joseph’s Town in Budapest) referenced as the centre of gravity of the Earth provides the background to the essential plot of the film as a deterring example, as a multiculti hell, to the adventures of an ethnically not less mixed herd of children; a plot that more or less succeeds in avoiding the stumbling-blocks caused by the maladministration of the script by relying on fable-like didactic and technical innovations.
Advanced Monopoly
The plot of Nyócker! – like the concept behind Rap, Revü, Rómeó with its authenticity debated by animation creators – is a modern Romeo and Juliet story from Józsefváros, which is fortunately derailed early on from the good old Verona thread, and places the emphasis on efficient teamwork and survival instead of the literary execution of the young lovers while the love thread is discarded with a post-modern whisk. Our protagonists are the descendants of the Lakatos Clan and the Csorba Family, students of the primary school in Mátyás Square, who strike the oil deal of the century in combined efforts with their Hungarian, Gypsy, Arabic, Chinese and Jewish friends in spite of hostilities between their parents. Ritchie Lakatos is in love with Julie Csorba, their siblings, Mary Lakatos and Simon Csorba constantly nag one another until a feracious time travel shakes the team up like a good field trip, and the team becomes the owner of the largest oil reserve of the world thanks to the strength of Kolompár Sandokan and Móricka (Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes). By outsmarting the parents and the police, our little heroes cash in big monies from buyers arriving from every corner of the globe but since fur, gold and Bruce Lee was always „in” within da ‘hood, the kids enchanted by luxury articles and video tapes are busted before long. The „fit really hits the shan” – not least from a dramaturgical point of view ‑ when grown-ups take over the business for a certain cut: the friendship and business relationship between Ronnie Lakatos and Charlie Csorba result in the most thorough and most didactic Roma-Hungarian dialogs of the film because even when they each had downed at least half a dozen shots, being aware of the tawdry language of the characters before, one is astounded by the intellectual depths of Professor Brinkmann from the Schwarzwalder Klinik reached by the paterfamiliases in their conversation. A similarly pre-digested monolog is featured when the story begins to unfold, when Ritchie Lakatos realised that love does not necessarily entail death, thus he decides not to share the fate of the famous dagos – but this twist may with ample benevolence be regarded as the spectacular rejection of the Romeo and Juliet plot. As control over the events slips from the hands of the kids’ team, so does the tense dramaturgy loosen up, and as local traditions go, the success story ends in a pub quarrel. Perhaps the ending is authentic this way but the politically incorrect inclusion of the nation-widely renowned Budapest-Bucharest controversy is not a lesser feat either; however, the characters elaborated both technically and personality wise would have deserved a cleverer, more thought through closing better aligned with the frame of the plot.
A popular film or a populist film?
Similarly to the „genre-creating” Attila Árpa, Gauder and his crew also realised that a wider audience could not be nailed to their seats with just nice words, especially when a film volunteers for nothing more than the presentation of a subculture. However, while Argo was technically not capable of meeting the challenge, the animators and programmers of Nyócker! created a complex visual world allowing the plot to advance forward slowly and safely in spite of dramaturgical blunders, and what is more, the substance and the form are constantly interacting with one another. The ghetto spirit of the film matches well with smoggy panoramic panning, the tunes with the swift matrix video backgrounds, the quality of life depicted with the light-deprived pub interiors and dog-pooed playgrounds. The occasional inconsistencies of the animation (certain 2D heroes are extended in 3D in certain action situations, the CGI illustration of a silver pistol barrels is suddenly relegated into a paper maché, etc.) could be attributed to the low-budget (400 thousand USD) production, the professional sound mixing and the excellent dubbing, indeed, offer a strong visual and audio experience that could be envied by most recent Hungarian popular films. The creators of Nyócker! have not only proven that computer-aided Hungarian animation features and populist popular films both have a future, but also demonstrated that small creative communities can easily match filmmakers equipped with academic knowledge. Come what may come.
(Translated by Zsolt Kelemen)
