Taxidermia is a journeying into a mind we wish not tread, a peek into a couple of worlds and the odd lifestyle we wish not observe; it is an ugly, depraved, grossly confrontational film out to upset and induce nausea than tell any kind of story or greatly explore any kind of material. The film ends up an oddly alienating mess, an adventurous and ambitious piece with a scrap of an idea at its very core which is gone about in its exploration by placing content up on screen of the most horrid, most irritating and most putrid sort; more often than not causing us to self-censor on a number of occasions when we aren't contemplating terminating the film-watching experience anyway. There is no base-level toward which the film might stoop; there is no bottom of any barrel the film is not willing to have a go at scraping, the only thing accessible to keep one sane during the watching of Taxidermia that of being able to recall films of old that have been equally controversial in their content on account of certain directors such as Greenaway or Noé, but films which have been able to incorporate great many degrees of substance to compliment such material. Taxidermia ends with a composition of an object more than eerily resembling Michelangelo's David, a somewhat famous and greatly admired work of art from over the ages. It is, in itself, frank and controversial; György Pálfi's 2006 Hungarian film has at least this in common with said sculpture.
Pálfi's film covers three men of the same family tree from the Second World War-set 1940s right through to the early years of the 21st Century, his key thesis appearing, through various guises, a number of the seven deadly sins including, but not limited to, lust; gluttony and pride. The film begins with an authoritarian and somewhat imperious voice-over informing us of the importance of remembering what precedes where one might currently find themselves in life, the words echo, as if some dictatorship is making the latest in deathly important announcements to which listening is obligatory. If any of us recall precisely what happens in his film then it's not because any of it is particularly important, rather, it will be down to the sheer shock imagery instead of a more genuine, more natural experience which is implemented onto us. We begin on The Eastern Front of World War 2; a certain Morosgoványi Vendel (Czene) is a private in the Hungarian army working with his nation's Communist allies. A masochist whom enjoys exposure to both extreme heat and the extreme cold, and a man with some of the angriest hormones ever put to screen, he fritters away his time between warfare with menial tasks on and around the farmland upon which his company is based spying the local women situated there and speaking to his ill-guided philosophical superiors.
There is nothing too base for either the film nor for its early protagonist in which to indulge; Pálfi effectively daring the viewer to terminate the experience before the opening act can conclude, where sequences or opening 'acts' in the past that have kicked films off, ranging from A Clockwork Orange right through to Irréversible, have carried with them that deep sense of shock cinema methodically at work, in Taxidermia we have a new winner as to the title: "if you can stomach the first 'x' minutes of 'xxx', then you can watch mostly anything". If bestiality, frank and uncensored masturbation as well as paedophilia brewed up in a cauldron known only to harbour the blackest of black comedy is your forté, you might get along better with this opening segment than I did.
We dart forward to 1994; the bright cinematography of a sunny day somewhere in Eastern Europe, as large numbers of people gather around performing speed-eaters in a stadium, actually offering respite from the gloomy and quite disgusting preceding war-set front-line shenanigans. Balatony Kálmán (Trócsányi), born at the end of the 1940s segment, is a world speed-eating champion competitor; in rivalry with many others and with his eye on a female champion of said sport named Aczél (Stanczel). They in turn create another child, a certain Balatony Lajoska (Bischoff) whom later transpires to be the man that operates within the field of the titular profession in modern day Hungary, and whose relationship with his domineering and disgruntled father propels the film's most interesting third for the final act.
The extravagant and expansive approach of delving through the generations and progressing things onward a full sixty or so years masks the fact that very little is either actually achieved, or that the film actually goes anywhere. The film is ultimately a demonisation of various sinful acts, Morosgoványi's lust getting him into bigger trouble than he would of liked with his lieutenant; Balatony's gluttony and pride at what he does having him come to resemble that of a cross between Jabba the Hutt and that large supporting character they had to wheel out on a digger's scoop towards the end of that terrible 1996 film Barb Wire, while it doesn't do his wife much good either. His son, Lajoska, partakes in certain acts later on which in turn comes to represent grotesque in-glorifications of wrath as plot developments transpire and the pride Lajoska takes in what he does combines disturbingly with the action he takes born out of narrative revelations. I don't doubt for a second that Pálfi answers to no studio executive in the ultimate creative choices his films probably harbour; but surely, there might have been somebody in and around the project of Taxidermia that on another day would've taken the man aside and just had a word in his ear: "Really, György? Really? Do we REALLY need those extended sequences of slicing, cutting, injecting, piercing and stitching on top of all that projectile vomiting?"
Pálfi's film covers three men of the same family tree from the Second World War-set 1940s right through to the early years of the 21st Century, his key thesis appearing, through various guises, a number of the seven deadly sins including, but not limited to, lust; gluttony and pride. The film begins with an authoritarian and somewhat imperious voice-over informing us of the importance of remembering what precedes where one might currently find themselves in life, the words echo, as if some dictatorship is making the latest in deathly important announcements to which listening is obligatory. If any of us recall precisely what happens in his film then it's not because any of it is particularly important, rather, it will be down to the sheer shock imagery instead of a more genuine, more natural experience which is implemented onto us. We begin on The Eastern Front of World War 2; a certain Morosgoványi Vendel (Czene) is a private in the Hungarian army working with his nation's Communist allies. A masochist whom enjoys exposure to both extreme heat and the extreme cold, and a man with some of the angriest hormones ever put to screen, he fritters away his time between warfare with menial tasks on and around the farmland upon which his company is based spying the local women situated there and speaking to his ill-guided philosophical superiors.
There is nothing too base for either the film nor for its early protagonist in which to indulge; Pálfi effectively daring the viewer to terminate the experience before the opening act can conclude, where sequences or opening 'acts' in the past that have kicked films off, ranging from A Clockwork Orange right through to Irréversible, have carried with them that deep sense of shock cinema methodically at work, in Taxidermia we have a new winner as to the title: "if you can stomach the first 'x' minutes of 'xxx', then you can watch mostly anything". If bestiality, frank and uncensored masturbation as well as paedophilia brewed up in a cauldron known only to harbour the blackest of black comedy is your forté, you might get along better with this opening segment than I did.
We dart forward to 1994; the bright cinematography of a sunny day somewhere in Eastern Europe, as large numbers of people gather around performing speed-eaters in a stadium, actually offering respite from the gloomy and quite disgusting preceding war-set front-line shenanigans. Balatony Kálmán (Trócsányi), born at the end of the 1940s segment, is a world speed-eating champion competitor; in rivalry with many others and with his eye on a female champion of said sport named Aczél (Stanczel). They in turn create another child, a certain Balatony Lajoska (Bischoff) whom later transpires to be the man that operates within the field of the titular profession in modern day Hungary, and whose relationship with his domineering and disgruntled father propels the film's most interesting third for the final act.
The extravagant and expansive approach of delving through the generations and progressing things onward a full sixty or so years masks the fact that very little is either actually achieved, or that the film actually goes anywhere. The film is ultimately a demonisation of various sinful acts, Morosgoványi's lust getting him into bigger trouble than he would of liked with his lieutenant; Balatony's gluttony and pride at what he does having him come to resemble that of a cross between Jabba the Hutt and that large supporting character they had to wheel out on a digger's scoop towards the end of that terrible 1996 film Barb Wire, while it doesn't do his wife much good either. His son, Lajoska, partakes in certain acts later on which in turn comes to represent grotesque in-glorifications of wrath as plot developments transpire and the pride Lajoska takes in what he does combines disturbingly with the action he takes born out of narrative revelations. I don't doubt for a second that Pálfi answers to no studio executive in the ultimate creative choices his films probably harbour; but surely, there might have been somebody in and around the project of Taxidermia that on another day would've taken the man aside and just had a word in his ear: "Really, György? Really? Do we REALLY need those extended sequences of slicing, cutting, injecting, piercing and stitching on top of all that projectile vomiting?"