Since I like the films of András Jeles and I consider him one of the greatest Hungarian directors, I was unable to put up with the fact that I did not understand and was unable to cope with his newest film, Joseph And His Brothers. I could not accept that this film had no meaning for me; that I was bored and uneasy watching it; that I didn’t have a clue what I was watching. I perceived the originality of the film and the baffling creativity and immense erudition of its creator, yet it conveyed no message for me. Then I found out that I was misled. This is what happens to someone who reads several reviews before watching a film. I thought that the job of interpretation had already been done for me, I thought I knew who is who, what role each character plays, through whose eyes and from what perspective the spectator is to see the events according to the intention of the director and what message the narration and the preface are to convey. It disturbed me that I did not understand this film, that neither the shadow-play episodes nor the surrounding plot made any sense to me. I did not comprehend the relationship between the two narrative levels, I did not grasp what Jeles was to say. I decided to ask him after the show what the hell this was, why it was important for him to make this film, but the director did not show up at the previously announced podium talk. Later, on a snowy afternoon, when I had no desire to go out and it even occurred to me that I should watch TV, I was reading something I don’t remember anymore, and there, while reading, it all became clear. This film is not about God. In this film we see the inverse of everything, the back side, the dark side. This is why the whole story is told in shadow play. This film does not interpret the Bible from the perspective of its inspirer but from the opposite perspective, that of the Tempter. In my mind, I ran over the list of names that the Jewish-Christian tradition uses for this other narrator: Adversary, Lucifer – we can recall a previous Lucifer in Jeles’s Annunciation – Fallen Angel. As if by magic, Jeles’s story became comprehensible.

Then I went to see the film again. I liked it. I had the feeling that I understood it. Previously, I was unable to acquiesce to the interpretation that the one who watches this story and who watches us, spectators, is God. This might come from the fact that I am a believer – this is something I rarely confess in writing, but this is a case when I have to – and I was unable to believe that all that is shown in this film can have any connection with God (in anybody‘s opinion), to believe that God would see these events from this perspective.

Chris Marker gives an analysis of the perspectives of Andrei Tarkovsky in his beautiful documentary on the Russian director. He examines the perspective from which Tarkovsky shows events happening in front of the camera. According to Marker, Tarkovsky’s perspective is that of an orthodox catholic believer and of an icon-painter. He shows a shot from Andrei Rublyov, that of bell casting, which happens to be the most beautiful scene in film history. The camera rises vertically into the air, is above the events and indeed what we see is seen through an angel’s eyes, who watches what happens down on the ground, watches the whirl of people, the bell being cast and us. Thus, it is a sacral perspective. Before and after Tarkovsky, no one had been able to make me believe that this is possible in a film; that the screen can become part of a sacral space and what is projected on it is not merely a play of light; that an icon can have more than two dimensions.

Jeles’s perspective is that of the Evil One. This is also a possible perspective. And it is also a sacral one.

Jeles’s film is a play with light. We see the surrounding plot – which is a brutal story about a woman forced into prostitution – through an infra camera. To someone who sees like this, it doesn’t matter if it’s light or dark, he always sees well, precisely, sharply and unexcitably. He also hears us well, since he is able to repeat each sentence. This narration technique – that we hear each sentence twice, once in the voice of the characters and then from the Evil One himself in a distorted voice that reminds us of evil cartoon-characters – was the idea of Miklós Erdély. The Evil One does not only hear but also gives the sentences in the mouth of the characters of his play.

One way of proving God’s existence is to prove the existence of the Evil One. To prove that the Adversary exists is tantamount to proving the existence of the merciful God.

I haven’t found in Jeles’s writing or in texts published on Jeles’s oeuvre any reference to the fact that the beholder of the events, the master of the all-seeing eye is Satan. Yet, certain sequences of the film seem to verify my theory. The girl (who is probably a prostitute, but it is not perfectly clear) is taken in a limousine to a luxurious villa in Buda, from the balcony of which the lights of the city can be seen. In the limousine, she talks to the man who (probably) hired her about the person to whom they are going. The master of the villa (played very realistically by Líviusz Varga, member of the rock band Quimby) is fairly rich. And profoundly wicked. He is a man whose thoughts and actions are mastered by the Evil One. He has sold his soul to the Evil One. He tells the girl that they are going to visit a demonic figure of exceptional abilities whose power is greater than anyone else’s. It is never mentioned that this someone is human. Based on what is said, he might be a sorcerer or the leader of a religious sect. But most probably, he is Satan himself. The villa has more to do with hell than with reality. Everything that happens there could happen in a pit of hell. The girl is humiliated, forced to oral sex and then sold. Jeles steps cruelty and brutality up to the maximum. The voice of the Evil One is almost unbearable in the surrounding plot. It is as intense as in the novels of Brett Easton Ellis (whose name is inevitable to mention at this point, even if Jeles has a totally different way of depicting the Evil One and the extreme wickedness of the world). Líviusz Varga often fixes his gaze at something beyond the space of the film. He is looking at his unseen client and addresses him as well as the girl when he says: „I simply can’t believe you are not having fun.” He is on friendly terms with the Evil One. What he does is clearly aimed at pleasing the Evil One. I wonder whom those people wanted to please who captured the Beslan school, took hostages in a Moscow theatre and flew into the Twin Towers. The ones who sell drugs in front of schools, who force women into prostitution, make porn films with animals and declare that mean tricks, corruption and ruthlessness are the only keys to success in this world. This is not merely about terrorism and viciousness: a person not possessed by the Evil One would not do things like these. The only reason why Ellis’s American Psycho can be considered a piece of art is that it manages to bring its readers into a state of catharsis by going ever deeper into the pits of wickedness. To a point that no literary work could surpass. It faces the reader with what a human being is capable of – perhaps not in reality but in his fantasy. The surrounding plot of Jeles’s film is unbearably depressing. I thought I had nothing to do with it. Yet, while watching, I took part in the girl’s suffering. At the end of the surrounding plot, the man who buys the girl cites Paul’s famous letter on love from the Bible. This is the only time the Evil One stops repeating other people’s words and speaks on his own behalf: „I’ve become fairly excited.”

The biblical episodes that make up most of the film are also used to distort the message of the Bible. Every story is about sin, human frailty, the power of the Evil One. The Fall of Man, lechery, adultery, betrayal, human sacrifice.

The protagonist is the Evil One in the biblical episodes as well. He wishes to prove that his power exceeds that of the Creator. The narrator – just like the narrators of peasant bibles – vulgarizes and profanes the stories of the Old Testament succulent of body fluids. These biblical stories are no moralizing cautionary tales, but stories about Evil and the force of temptation. The inserted documentary sequences are also to show how vividly and actively Evil is present in history. While the style of the surrounding plot recalls the socio-horror stories of drMáriás, the language of the paraphrased Peasant Bible reminds one of the short stories of Péter Kárpáti. These two discordant voices are two parts of a disharmonic chorale of the Evil One.

The first episode of Jeles’s film, in which the charming Bori Ruttkai tells us about a transcendent experience with angels, is an invocation. The director seems to ask for the help of heavenly angels to tell the story of the Evil One. He seems to ask for protection against the one he is going to speak about. The invocation is the only part of the film, in which Jeles uses conventional film devices and it seems separate the invocation from the rest of the film. The film itself starts at the point, when the all-seeing Eye appears. Jeles’ film is the story of the Eye as the title of Bataille’s famous novel says. The film is over when the Eye reappears, but this re-appearing is the end not only of the film but of the history, too. This is the Second Advent: not of Messiah but of Satan.