In 2017, the main prize of the Berlin Film Festival was awarded to the Hungarian project of director Ildiko Enedi, known to compatriots in the film “My Twentieth Century” with Oleg Yankovsky. According to the results of voting, there were four awards on the tape account: “Golden Bear”, FIPRESCI Grand Prix, “Ecumenical Jury Prize” and audience sympathy. Apparently, each of the above-mentioned gatherings of critics and spectators wanted to definitely note the creation of a project that ruthlessly and extremely accurately conveys a sense of numbness that is relevant for modern society. The reviews “About Body and Soul” are extremely supportive, the rating of the film IMDb: 8.00.
Company handwriting
Ildiko Enedi has not made a feature film for the past 20 years. The director was involved in the creation of television, short films and documentaries. “About body and soul”, movie-makers’ reviews are positioned as a return to the big cinema, which clearly demonstrates that the director has not lost a bit of her corporate identity: software detachment from politics, playing with dreams, mirror images and doubles, searches for herself and the love of the main characters, and most importantly - a very grasping female look at the surrounding reality. It is no coincidence that “About the body and soul” the reviews of critics characterize as a painful and sublimely poetic cinema.
The inspiration for the creation of the project for Enyedi was the poem of the poetess from Hungary Agnesh Nemesh Nagy, in which colorfully narrates about the passion that actually rages inside every inhabitant, even the most distant.
The perfect example of female cinema
According to experts of the cinema, read out in reviews of the film “On Body and Soul”, the picture is ideally tailored and stitched, sometimes even too much, because the story is made too predictable from the author’s prompts and precisely set accents. But this captivates the viewer, who sometimes likes to feel no more stupid than the creators of the project.
Many viewers in reviews of the film “On Body and Soul” call the main incomprehensible game of animals its main advantage. The narrative opens a panorama scene of a snowy forest with its inhabitants - a magnificent pair of deers. A male who has found food for his girlfriend watches how she chews, after which they go to the pond, drink, periodically touching with wet noses. This serene episode is abruptly replaced by a scene in a slaughterhouse, the ongoing action does not spare the nerves of the audience. Unyedi enyedi demonstrates the bloody process of turning cows into beef.
Short storyline
A new employee, Maria (Alexandra Borbei), comes to the slaughterhouse, taking the vacancy of a quality inspector. She reminds her colleagues of an alien. A woman perceives herself as an insensitive robot. The heroine is endowed with an outstanding ability to remember, rational thinking, and at the same time is completely devoid of sentimentality. She is the opposite of her leader Indra (Geza Morsani), a lone man wise in life experience with a paralyzed left arm and an adult daughter. The boss, as usual, tries to establish contact with a new employee, but runs into the icy alienation of the newly-made quality inspector. Soon, a psychologist arrives at the factory, who, during a survey of workers, discovers that these two are regularly haunted by dreams involving the pair of deers described above.
In the story of the film “On Body and Soul”, the reviews of experts focus on a lot of unpredictable turns, but note that it is most interesting to observe the skill of a beautiful acting duet. The creative tandem of Geza Morchani and Alexandra Borbei is endowed with truly animal organics.
Realism and Humanity
The film “On Body and Soul” is praised by the audience, as are reviews from film critics. However, many authors argue that in some places the tape is quite difficult to watch. The project of Ildiko Enedi, from an ethical point of view, is an impeccable gesture. The creators, having introduced themselves into a real existing slaughterhouse, filmed the everyday production process with the permission of the management and employees. At the same time, in the name of filming, not a single animal was injured, on the contrary, the dying sufferings of animals were immortalized in a humanistic tape that there is no difference between deer, cows and people. And those, and others, and others are sometimes doomed to loneliness and ultimately to death. No one will come to their rescue. Only the gaze of another or a camera lens can briefly stir up the soul of a body condemned to suffering.
The specifics of the shooting process
An auxiliary effect to the film is given by the author’s style of shooting. Visualization is extremely minimalistic. Therefore, if it weren’t for her beauty, it could be argued that the director and cameraman Mate Herbaya decided to adhere to the Dogma-95 rules, according to which imaginary actions are prohibited, music is used if it’s in the frame, shooting exclusively in kind, action - Here and now. In addition, the characters are always in the closed spaces of the room - at home and at work, staring lonely at the laptop or TV monitor. The street is visible only in the reflection of shop windows, hidden by evening twilight, or the landscape is very blurry.
With all this, the movie “On the Body and the Soul” is not described by the reviews as a metaphysical parable, the authors in reviews tend to classify the film as everyday tragicomedy. Indeed, the film contains a lot of the ridiculous and absurd, exact, sentimental and touching.