KATALINA VARGA
Hungary/Romania, 2009, 84 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Peter Strickland.
A small-budget vengeance drama, filmed in Romania with Hungarian support by a British-born director.
Post-credits information indicates that this film took two years from shooting to transfer from digital to film. It is an unpolished film, ragged often in look and in narrative drive. There are often varied colour gradings, bright for herds and farm sequences, dark for much of the rest of the film.
Audiences, drawn in by the plot and the acting, will allow for the limitations of style so that they can can concentrate on characters and motivation. While the setting is contemporary (mobile phones, cars), the actions seems timeless as a mother and son travel old roads, mountains and forests in a horse-drawn cart.
It quickly emerges that Katalin (Hilda Peter), up till now happily married, is upset when her husband learns that her son was conceived in rape ten years earlier. She takes her son through the old towns and rugged country to find her assailants and wreak vengeance.
When she finally finds the rapist, the situation is not as she imagined and there are dire consequences for innocent others as well as herself. The director noted that there is dramatic ambiguity as we see a good character go bad and a bad character change to good.
1.Small-budget, the camerawork, the editing over several years? Transference of digital film to film stock? Ragged in look and screenplay?
2.Yet the effect, the familiar plot, a vengeance story, the consequences of vengeance? Somebody good becoming bad, somebody bad becoming good?
3.The digital camerawork, the clarity and lack of clarity, the gradings of the colour, the darkness, the beauty of the countryside, the flocks and the herds? The close-ups and intimate portraits of characters?
4.The musical score, the moods?
5.The tense opening, the police, Katalina and her son fleeing? The return to this scene and the interrogation, the beating of the farmer?
6.Katalina, first seen picking the flowers, the little girl and her running away? Her friend and the discussion, the information that her husband knew the truth? The slap, her reputation? The boy, telling the story of going to see his grandmother, leaving the father behind? His being unwilling to go? The later phone calls?
7.The wagon, mother and son, the lies, travelling – and the old-fashioned 19th century look of the cart and horse? The contrast with the mobile phones?
8.The night, the dance, Katalina’s encounter with the man, confronting him, the truth, his saying that he was a father, pleading for mercy, giving him Antal’s name, her killing him?
9.The police, the interrogation – their not being the police, interrogating the man who gave them shelter? The search, getting more information, ultimate vengeance?
10.The fields, the shelter, the meals, Orban and his wandering, his mother’s anger?
11.Asking directions, the girls and their advising not to go to the town? Arriving at the farm, seeing the work, singling out Antal?
12.Antal and his hospitality, his wife, love for his wife, talking, the meal?
13.Antal and the truth, Katalina telling the story while they were rowing, the wife listening, Antal and his knowing the truth? The long narrative of her hitchhiking, the rape, the effect? Antal asking forgiveness?
14.The wife, loving her husband, not suspecting anything, overhearing the story, hanging herself?
15.The boy, playing with Antal, the bond between them, running away, Antal and Katalina searching?
16.Katalina, being found by the men, her death?
17.Antal and Orban being left, their grief, their future together?
18.The consequences of evil, evil and corruption, the possibility of forgiveness and redemption?
