at the very center of this film lies 2 simple themes… a man wearing a mask, and dancing with the devil. these themes are eluded to very early on, but as the film progresses, they manifest themselves clearer and clearer. Hendrick feasts on the attention like a stray dog feasts on trash; he does not care where it comes from for food is food, and he begins to enjoy and savor the taste of this trash to the point where he begins to sing its praise, but a dog can only eat so much trash before it gets sick… especially when that trash is the most rotten and disgusting kind there is.
this film reminded me in more ways than one of another great hungarian film, ‘The Cremator’. while both films share some similarities, i can almost say each films respective endings are complete antitheses to one another. in ‘The Cremator’, the protagonist is euphoric and content with what they have become, while in this film, Henrick eventually comes to loathe his ‘final form’.
overall this was really damn good, but it didnt quite blow my jocks off as i was expecting it to. dont get me wrong, its toeing the line of masterpiece territory, but there are a few things holding it back from that upper, upper echelon of cinema in my opinion.
at the very center of this film lies 2 simple themes… a man wearing a mask, and dancing with the devil. these themes are eluded to very early on, but as the film progresses, they manifest themselves clearer and clearer. Hendrick feasts on the attention like a stray dog feasts on trash; he does not care where it comes from for food is food, and he begins to enjoy and savor the taste of this trash to the point where he begins to sing its praise, but a dog can only eat so much trash before it gets sick… especially when that trash is the most rotten and disgusting kind there is.
this film reminded me in more ways than one of another great hungarian film, ‘The Cremator’. while both films share some similarities, i can almost say each films respective endings are complete antitheses to one another. in ‘The Cremator’, the protagonist is euphoric and content with what they have become, while in this film, Henrick eventually comes to loathe his ‘final form’.
overall this was really damn good, but it didnt quite blow my jocks off as i was expecting it to. dont get me wrong, its toeing the line of masterpiece territory, but there are a few things holding it back from that upper, upper echelon of cinema in my opinion.
