Katalin Varga (2009) Reviews

• Powerful fable

  oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx2009-10-12

  Peter Strickland's debut movie Katalin Varga reminds me very much of another recent British film, Asif Kapadia's 2007 effort Far North, which is also a folk horror story about an outcast and her child. Stickland uses the dank forest of Romania instead of the perilous ice flows of the north, but the movies are birds of a feather, low budget movies intended to tap primal energies. Children run away from Katalin Varga, a darkly pretty woman with live-wire eyes, who's altogether too spirited to remain unmolested in the time-capsuled world with which the movie presents te viewer. Folk have mobile phones, but Katalin still travels by horse-drawn cart, and men still make hay in the fields with pitchforks. Gossip in Katalin's village is poisonous enough to make Clouzot's vision in Le Corbeau appear positively made of marshmallow. Following the repurcussions of gossip regarding Katalin's past, she travels with her child into an apparently infrastructure-less hinterland on a dark mission, like black lightning. It's no surprise to find, following shot after shot of foreboding nature scenes, that this is a tragedy, in a cul-de-sac structure similar to Monte Hellman's brilliant 1965 movie Ride in the Whirlwind. It's a brutal movie, in structure rather than in screen violence, which there is remarkably little of, and which is generally obscured in incoherence when it occurs. It's almost senseless and left me with a directionless primitive anger.

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• See it, if you have a chance

  bpx692010-05-13

  Just some tidbits: In an after screening q&a session the author said he wanted to originally cast the movie in Albania, where it would IMO be a good fit with the patriarch governed extended families being the dominant societal organisational form and blood line revenge a.k.a. besa still alive in rural parts of Albania and Kosovo. But that region in the times of shooting of the film was not a particularly safe place for an itinerant cinematographer, so Hungary and Romania were chosen instead. This being perhaps fortunate for an intimate story of the film, it would be IMO hard to avoid a different political context, including war atrocities and mass rapings taking place in Kosovo at the time of shooting. Still the Katalin's impulse, and a quick decision to search for her rapist, would be clearer in rural Albania, as within the gossip run partially traditional and partially already modern Romanian village. We are therefore left to our own devices to figure out her motivation during the course of the movie, where the images of dark woods and music leading us to expect some Dracula offspring or something equally sinister to jump out any minute now, do not exactly help us there. The cinematography is really beautiful, the director commenting that it's not that difficult to be director of photography in Transylvania, where you have so many interesting things and locations to point your camera to. So many decisions about locations were made on the spot without much planning. The movie was envisioned, shot and brought to a rough cut on a 16mm film using a director's small inheritance of 30.000 Euro. He attributes his finding a producer to finance the blow-up to 35mm to pure luck, but without this luck probably no-one would ever see this very beautiful movie. At the point of my writing the distribution contracts and all the awards brought him about a third of this investment back. I have to mention the scene where Katalin tells the story of her being raped to her rapist and his wife, as something, that will remain in my memory for some time. Hilda Peter in the role of Katalin Varga is great. Much of the film's appeal is due to her and also other actor's performance.

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• The Law of Unintended Consequences

  nqure2011-11-10

  I enjoyed this film and the lead actress (Hilda Peter) gives a memorable, strong performance as a wronged woman seeking vengeance. The rural setting of Eastern Europe seemed appropriate where patriarchal societies still exist and blood-feuds common. The use of landscape, the story of vengeance gave the film the tone of a folk-myth and the end of the film, with Katalin confronting her rapist in a boat with his innocent, loving wife, was highly dramatic, the boat turning around the river in circles, reflecting the maelstrom of emotions. I thought the film well-structured, a basic revenge plot, but also more subtle than that: about husbands & wives and secrets, sin & guilt as well as a haunting, atmospheric soundtrack. But also how Katalin's revenge does not quite go as planned and her assailant is not a two-dimensional villain. I had difficulties reconciling some of the characterisation, especially Antal, the assailant. Perhaps his act, that of a normally good quiet man, is indicative that we can be all prone to evil, but Antal's characterisation jarred with the brutal act he had committed in the past. I think it would have been more plausible if his accomplice had been the rapist and Antal the bystander who had done nothing. Katalin's revenge does not go as anticipated, claiming the innocent as well as the guilty. I feel some of the problems in the film are perhaps due to its limited budget rather than ambition/intent. The ending was bleak, with the cycle of revenge continuing. I did think Antal would redeem himself, but the film perhaps ends on a darker, truthful note.

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• Traditional ballad transformed

  Gecq2009-02-16

  Oh well, we have a directing debut here and quite an impressive one at that. Good camera, beautiful images and musical score, this narration is set in Hungarian-Romanian Transylvania. Spoiler: Our female Protagonist, impressively played by Hilda Péter, had been raped by two men in the past. When the truth about this incident which she had been hiding and which resulted in the birth of her only child, a son, comes to light ten years after, she is cast out by her husband and decides to take revenge on the men who raped her. She takes her wagon and her son and sets out on a journey of tracking down the men, planning on confronting and killing them. This narration clearly is based on Mihail Sadoveanu's famous novel "Baltagul" (The Hatchet) which is transforming the traditional Romanian theme of the ballad "Mioriţa" into a modern detective story and blending the traditional role of a Romanian woman into Modernism. Our protagonist starts on a similar journey but the ends which we are facing are showing cruelly how Sadoveanu's story could have ended more realistically.

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• See this film

  allmouth2010-02-09

  I missed this first time round and am so glad I caught up with it at an afternoon showing at a local independent cinema. Even more encouraging was that I expected to be the only person there but, although only a smattering of people (in a large auditorium), there were enough to create an atmosphere (that may be in my head but hopefully some people will get what I mean). So, transfixed by Hilda Peter from the outset, the film moved beautifully through dreamy countryside as the revelation of a hidden secret drove Katalin and her son away from their marital home. The menacing undertone haunted their journey to remote villages, the audience waiting for the inevitable vengeance to erupt. The nature of the film and its brutal climax prompted something I love to see as the credits rolled. No one moved or spoke. If the audience is out of their seats the second the picture fades I feel either they're relieved the film has finished or have weak bladders or a drink problem. Katalin Varga was successful in conquering the audience, an endorsement of its quality. See it.

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