I find the poetic phrase that qualifies films as the art of light shallow or at any rate one-sided: often it is the best examples that prove they’re just as much that of darkness. Hungarian metaphysical cinematic art, which fortunately counts far fewer directors and is more intimate and individual than to become a school or movement - though the close artistic-human ties and master-pupil relations between its representatives organically connect it to the noble ancient notion of schools – has proved this theorem with numerous authoritative cases. Thanks to Dealer the short list of metaphysicians’ names is now extended by another: that of Benedek Fliegauf.
The young director shot in colour in vain, similarly to his great forerunners, György Fehér and Béla Tarr, black is nevertheless the most important colour on his palette. Even the letters of the main credits flash out from complete darkness and fade back into it – so we never actually see all the letters of a word at once – just as the diminishing speck of light of the last scene gradually dwindles away. We see the images of a rainy, overcast autumnal day from dawn to dusk through consistently dark tone shots – even the vigorous dollying of the bicycle ride, the images most saturated with light, produces a weighty effect with its black lines. It is to Péter Szatmári DP’s credit that Dealer has the densest and most jet-black night of Hungarian films ever. Black verges on the shades of cool, pastel, pale greeny-blue and metallic grey, creating a chilling atmosphere. Faces sink into the pallid lights - burnt-out, haggard, ill gazes whose furrows, the mauve-grey bags beneath their eyes, are mercilessly emphasized by long shots. The visual aspects of directing, however, bear no trace of mockery: it’s more as if someone were observing these people from a distance with bashful sympathy - in any case without a chance of being able to offer them a helping hand.
The frames play an unusually important part in the direction: one of the dominant angles shows faces placed at the edge of the quadrage, often with foreheads and chins missing, containing only the expressive elements of their glance. It is only faces that are in focus on the long lens close-ups; the surroundings form a diffuse and obscure space. These blurred spaces have a central role in the visual world of the entire film, and while the camera’s panning we often merely see indiscernible patches – as beautiful metaphors of an approach to life conveyed by the film. During the wider shots the camera is almost continuously on the move, transforming the static scenes as well. Most frequent, however, are the slow circular tracking shots that produce a floating sensation with a more profound structural role. The unremitting circle indicating eternal repetition is the film’s principal metaphor which appears on countless levels, such as the time frame: we learn about the events of a single day, that is a complete cycle, from dawn till dusk; or the time structure: we see the chronologically last motif in the first scene, thus resulting in a circle-like structure, while the dealer cycling between locations also evokes a circle.
Disregarding the crew list and the party scene, there’s practically no music in the traditional sense, yet the sound effects enjoy a highlighted role: the sound design – guided by Fliegauf himself – is promoted to a rank identical to that of the visual composition. Practically the whole film is accompanied by a horizon din of varying intensity: a ghostly sound – akin to the roar of wind-swept highlands or the howling draught of industrial chimneys and ventilating shafts – which is perhaps the most important artistic means of creating the film’s depressing, spiritual atmosphere. The scenes with dramatic implication feature in turn some kind of a monotonous, often irritating sound effect, intensifying them even further and at the same time – owing to their stylisation – also creating a certain distance. The dialogues with Wanda the heroin addict (Anikó Szigeti) are accompanied by metallic industrial noises; in the luxury apartment of Baraba’s (Barbara Thurzó) keeper we hear the commentary of a nature film in reverse; while the revealing of the origins of the bizarre hiccuping sounds coming from the girl who’s suffering from psilocybin poisoning – taking place due to accomplished sound effects only at the very end of the scene – is one of the film’s astonishingly powerful climaxes. The permanent background of noises forms a veritable minimal techno and this is no poetic exaggeration: the director has consciously chosen emphatically repetitive effects, constructed from few elements. On the other hand the wordless scene set in the run-down beer garden where to the monotonous buzz of the mobile against a blurred and – due to circular tracking - dynamically moving background we see the dealer’s (Felicián Keresztes) face positioned to the left of the screen seems like part of a chill-out, psychedelic video clip. Intellectual clip art could have been an inspiring source; in many aspects the visual world evokes the videos of Chris Cunningham –minus the surreal of course.
An important motif of the film is death, which the dealer has to confront at many points of the story. In the course of the morning he himself gives his old friend a mortal dose; in the afternoon he visits his father whom he hasn’t seen for a long time and they talk about the death of his mother. The dealer was still a child when she fell onto the tarmac outside their housing block while cleaning the windows. His father hasn’t been able to get over the shock ever since. He relates how he prevented the dent caused by the body in the pavement, considered by him the grave of his wife, from being patched up by local authority workmen, claiming it was irreverence. Eventually the father persuades his son to visit the memorial place that the latter initially regards as a puddle, but due to his father’s quiet, stubborn, incantation-like nagging is finally made to sense something of the spiritual charge of the cracked tarmac. The son greets the cavity, then seems to feel cold, therefore urging his father to go, and finally leaves on his own. The strangest portrayal of the subject of death is a grotesque, tale-like, mysterious episode, which at the same time is a tribute to the art of the deceased master, György Fehér. In its centre stands Fehér’s favourite actor, István Lénárt – or rather his face – who with his features reminiscent of sombre wood etchings and his inimitably intermittent diction in both his full-length feature films (Twilight, 1990 and Passion, 1998) created memorable scenes with stifling atmospheres. Fliegauf uses this idol-faced elderly man totally in Fehér’s spirit: as a figure who stands above the events, formulating abstract thoughts without disturbing the film’s otherwise areflective medium. In one of the most beautiful pitch-dark scenes in which the lights of Budapest sprawl beneath us like a variation of Los Angeles he tells the resting dealer a parable on the inevitability of death and then disappears into the night. Indeed: fleeing from death is impossible but meeting it isn’t – a thought that later acquires great significance.
The permanent presence of Mors imperator (domineering death) also affects the time structure: the father’s (Lajos Szakácsi) slip of the tongue (saying „last week” instead of „last year”) not only shows that for him time has come to a standstill since the death of his wife – it also concerns the whole film. In spite of the strict chronological framework – similar to the works of the great metaphysical predecessors, primarily Béla Tarr, – the film virtually creates its own time in which even the scenes without dialogue or action (like the ones set in the beer garden) gain justification. The proportions, however, aren’t perfect: mainly in the sections with dialogues – noticeably during the visit to Dragan (Dusán Vitanovics) – the odd pause or sustained edit shot, no longer able to convey anything new, just spoils the film’s captivating character. Similarly the main title lasts too long. In the few first minutes the viewer inevitably thinks that this must be why the film is 160 minutes long. Fortunately, it is not so.
Although the film offers much more than the actual events, the plot nevertheless plays an essential role. The main grounds for the latter similarly to Forest (2003) are dialogues, not a contradiction in itself as it is through them that we learn about many previous events and the characters’ network of relations. Though Fliegauf’s dialogue-writing professionalism has suffered no damage there’s much change in comparison to his first feature film: due to the highly stylised script the writer positions himself more at a distance from the colloquial langue; drug slang – evidently for reasons of comprehensibility – appears only rarely and in well-decipherable forms („big H, coke”). The occasionally overstretched purposefulness that despite an artistic sloppiness characterises the introductory dialogues now eases off beneficially – in certain cases too much so. In the first conversations with Barbara and the scenes with the father and Dragan’s family there’s too much airiness in places, all at the expense of tension. One of the consistently reoccurring forms of dialogue may perhaps serve to intensify the musicality of the film: variational repetition is a common practice in text construction. This, however, in my opinion is a clear mistake: when Dragan’s sister is speculating over the possibility that the dealer, pretending to be a pizza-delivery man, hasn’t actually brought anything, some may find the echoing of the word „pizza” even funny, but the recursive „got it?” in the following sequence is more boring than anything else. Enumeration (the listing of the mother’s actions and the construction materials) and permutation in the father’s monologue-like speeches is mostly irritating partly for being without function and partly for lacking emotional charge – something that could have justified the sister’s words. The script creates parallels with the style of speech of the Jeremiads in vain: it’s an affected and over-stylised solution that moreover sticks out from the otherwise flowing dialogues. It’s interesting to note that even in Forest Lajos Szakácsi’s scene didn’t quite work for similar reasons. It might be worth the director rethinking their joint work.
The frame uniting the episodes with dialogues – a single day in the life of a drug-dealer, roaming the streets from dawn till late at night on his bicycle to wait on his customers – though rather unusual, in practise is a smart and easily-justified solution (not only mobile but also relatively inconspicuous) and thus even its dramatic function doesn't make it seem implausible. The cycling sequences are effective counterpoints to the interior shots that operate with little movement. The dealer’s journey is accompanied by ominous signs: encountering a fat security guard on a scooter, a manager rolling about on the ground with his bag flung away, a man slashing his car to bits with a hammer and a couple running in the wood with their child in a pushchair are all traces of disjointed time, testifying to Fliegauf’s strange sense of humour, just like the featuring of the father digging.
During his deals the pusher’s own problems come to the fore increasingly: the case of Újváry the greedy cocaine-addict sect leader is just routine-like shady business, but helping an old friend to his death is stirring - followed by discovering from the serious heroin addict ex-partner that he’s the father of her child, Bogi, is a change that affects his whole life. In all likelihood it is this that prompts the dealer to call on his father too. The discovery of his daughter is the only good thing that happens to him. Bogi (Edina Balogh) and Barbara are the minute counter-poles to the negativity flowing from every situation and relationship. Of course the girlfriend of dubious status, living as the kept woman of an Anglo-Saxon businessman, not sensing how much need there is for her then and there and travelling off to Lisbon is not faultless either. Purity and love is all the more concentrated in the figure of the little girl; she’s the dealer’s only hope and right from the beginning they have a mutual affection for one another. The practically tongue-tied child loosens up beside him and doesn’t even feel like returning to her mother. The fact that father and daughter are also blood relations – despite Wanda’s retracted claim – is expressed by means of a beautiful photographic solution. The most moving and memorable conversation, radiating human warmth and at the same time revealing the terror of losing all hope, takes place between Bogi and her father in the kitchen in the evening.
The events of the day finally drive the dealer to weigh up his entire life. He is increasingly tormented by confronting the ruined lives in whose destruction he himself was instrumental too. Although he has grown accustomed to the sight, today chance has illuminated everything with sharper light, bringing his responsibility to the fore. The possibility of change and a fresh start are delivered by his little girl. When the dealer makes an uncertain attempt in the evening to take the little girl with him it is she who confronts him with the fact that it wouldn’t be easy to send her mother to hospital and that he himself wouldn’t be better company for her either („You mean we’d sell the stuff together?”). Eventually, losing his footing, he appears to turn to Bogi for help („Then what do you think I should do?” „Have some cocoa, it’s delicious”). When meeting Barbara before the night party he asks her to look after the child in the event of something happening to him - she however doesn’t seem to understand. It’s as if the dealer were saying goodbye though.
The winding up is unusual. Dragan – worked up from the family scandal and his lack of cocaine – surfaces with a henchman and together they beat up the dealer and probably even give him a shot of his own heroine. He’s left to fight off psychedelic visions till dawn. Dazed he drags himself to the salon inherited from his bodybuilder friend, injects a final dose and writes himself into his friend’s death: he climbs into the solarium to burn to death. Only a narrow strip is visible of the body illuminated by the bluish light of the coffin of artificial sun – a uniquely effective image – getting further and further away, accompanied by the harsh cyber noises of the heating fluorescent tubes, swimming slowly in dimness like Kharon’s glass boat until fading completely. A cathartic coda of hypermodern poetry, exposing an extremely rich range of interpretation, as according to the evidence of the opening sequence the hero (perhaps) survives. So why did he do it? Certainly not out of cowardice since he never submitted to threats or violence. Defending Bogi might not have been an impossible task – after all he had money. Did he not have enough strength to start again? And so on; question follows question. As with all significant works the taking-in of the film doesn’t end with the screening – it captivates you for a long time.
The film has another important virtue that I wouldn’t like to leave unmentioned: the fortunate blending of originality and modernity. Most motives, such as the excess of drugs, the much celebrated leader of the sect, the bizarre sandwich man, the bodybuilding salon, the beauty farm and the permanent sound of TV in the background or the noise pollution are all the deposits of current social changes. Besides presenting this, Benedek Fliegauf manages to create an individual vision of the world and a piece original in every respect. It’s as if he were standing on the borderland of two worlds: this low-budget film’s technical approach and artistic exploitation of technology represent the American norms of the 21st century, while its profound picture of humans and innovative director’s tricks also link it on many levels to the rich traditions of the east. Dealer is a distinctive and appealing hybrid: the first masterpiece of Hungarian cinematic art incorporated into the medium of western culture.
Although uncharacteristic of Hungarian film distribution Dealer was immediately presented to the public in two versions: the 160-minute version screened at the Film Week (the basis for my review) was recently abridged by Fliegauf to 137 minutes. The latter is considered the director’s version, from which most nationwide distribution copies were made, while the former the producer’s version, screened by Vörösmarty and Palace MOM cinemas. Although the director’s cut is undoubtedly more homogenous than its predecessor as far as style is concerned, to my mind the film has nevertheless been depleted by the curtailing: both the network of motives and the span of the plot have suffered from the changes and the expulsion of humour and more explicit wisdom have eliminated important structural counterpoints. I suggest therefore that film gourmets and aficionados of spiritual cinematic art buy tickets to the exclusive producer’s version (you can take along foreign guests as well to Palace MOM as the film is shown with English subtitles), while the wider range of young viewers, enticed by the title and the giant mushroom, will find the 137 minutes more than enough of a challenge.
with photographs by Katalin Mészáros
Translated by Eszter Szász
