Kontroll

I can’t recommend this film more highly; even though my expectations had been pumped up by extravagant praise in various reviews, I still found it surprising, visually quite stunning, and a hell of a lot of fun. (And Kris sat down to watch five minutes, figuring it was among the cheesy foreign thrillers I clutter our queue with, but got sucked right in.) It’s not great, but as a first film, working on a minimal budget, it’s among the most stylish and entertaining films I’ve seen all summer.


I don’t want to say too much about the plot. Set (and shot entirely) in the subway system of Budapest, it imagines a kind of parallel underground world where small, work-gangs of controllers police and patrol the subways. The movie does set up a kind of thriller plot, and in its skeletal structure hews toward the design of many Hollywood action films: group of misfits, vague shadowy evil murders, an arc which reveals the hero’s deep sensitive background and sets up a romantic interest and allows for some notion of climactic resolution with baddies….

…but damned if I ever knew, beyond recognizing in the abstract these moments, what was going to happen next. At a narrative level, there is a pleasure in the eccentricities of character and community that lets the film frequently meander away from forward motion, into engaging little bits of comic play. Then again, there will be moments of suspense–a race between trains–that are shot in a way to maximize our dread, that make up for the lack of big-money fx with careful editing and montage. For a first film, it is remarkably confident about how to use and how to ignore conventions. I can say, without spoiling anything, that the ending could be read as straightforward action-film resolution, symbolic psychological resolution, and/or imagistic allegory — and each possibility complements the others.

And it is a visual marvel, really exploiting the glorious dank gloom of the subway lines. Characters are often gray-faced in front of gray backgrounds, with a flash of greenish lighting and a couple of bright maroon smears on chin or forehead after a recent fight.

So I’m raving–but I don’t want to oversell. Grab it, but set yourself up for that willingness to spend too much time with character shtick, or to enjoy the pleasures of the edit in a perhaps-too-extended footrace. But I’d stack it up without hesitation against my other two favorite action films of the year (Kung Fu Hustle and the distant secondplace for Batman Begins).

24 thoughts on “Kontroll

  1. For what its worth (and Reynolds will lable me wrong once again) but I stopped watching Kontroll after 25 minutes. I was bored and uninvolved.

  2. Would it be too sarcastic to lable yew rong?

    And if that seems snide, try to imagine how much willpower it’s taken me not to respond to your comment about how much “heart” a film had.

    Ah well, we’ll never agree, we agree, on many a fine action film.

    Has anyone seen Constant Gardener yet? I am dying to see it, and to disagree with Jeff about it.

  3. ‘Kontroll’ is a gem of a film. I can’t add to Mike’s account of all the ways in which it works, except to say that I spent the first 20 minutes comparing it to ‘Subway’ because it so clearly is aware of the earlier movie. Almost every decision Besson makes in ‘Subway’ is wrong and almost every decision this director makes is right. But soon you forget about Besson and just admire the sure touch in ‘Kontroll.’ Really, this has everything, even (gasp) heart and soul. And whimsy. Not a word I use often, but always to be admired in a movie.

  4. I remember enjoying Besson’s Subway, but maybe I need to see it again. There are a number of French films/co-productions from this period (early to mid 80s) that are worth revisiting. Looking back, it was a pretty good era (if a little heavy on the Depardieu).

    Jean-Jacques Beineix’s DIVA
    Maurice Pialat’s POLICE
    Wajda’s DANTON
    Ettore Scola’s LA NUIT DE VARENNES (Harvey Keitel as Thomas Paine!)
    Truffaut’s THE LAST METRO
    Berri’s JEAN DE FLORETTE and MANON DES SOURCES

  5. I’m glad you liked Kontroll, Chris. I think the film’s accomplishments seem even more astounding when you hear about the way it got filmed–shoestring budget, late at night, and with skepticism from the subway authorities (hence that strange little opening statement before the film).

    John–I absolutely agree about those really astounding French films. I usually leave Besson off the list EXCEPT for Le Dernier Combat, a far-future post-apocalypse pleasure, with Jean Reno (of course), and where no one can talk. But I really think you’re missing my favorite film of the era: Beineix’s Betty Blue, which I recently bought and which still seems hyperbolically emotional and enthralling… an interesting complement to the stylish icy fun of his Diva.

  6. I didn’t have bad memories of ‘Subway’ but I recently watched it again and it just seemed horrible — an exercise in style and little else — made worse by Lambert’s vacuous sneer for the entire movie. Perhaps I had seen ‘Highlander’ in between…

    There were a bunch of good French films at that point (I especially liked ‘Diva’) but I will always remember a review I read of ‘Jean de Florette’ probably in the ‘New Yorker.’ It said that this was exactly the sort of movie that the French new wave was reacting against. That was sort of my reaction.

    Can I use the link to French movies to ask for information? I have searched this site in every way I can think of and I cannot find a reference to a French zombie film. I have a vague sense that it came from Jeff. The context was of a zombie film made by the same director who made (the wonderful) ‘Time Out’ (and the interesting ‘Human Resources’), Laurent Cantet. I checked IMDB and cannot find the zombie movie by that director. I’d love a clue.

  7. Truffaut, in his essay “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema” mentions Clouzot’s 1949 version of Manon, written by the “scenarist” Jean Ferry: “Nothing better to hope for from the young scenarists. They simply work their shift, taking good care not to break any taboos.”

    But Berri’s version of Manon is good. Damned good. Besides, Truffaut knew Berri quite well. Berri produced “The Little Thief”–the film Truffaut had planned to direct before he died, based on a screenply he co-wrote with Claude de Givray. Truffaut praised Berri’s work (especially his 1967 film “The Two of Us”) and always mentioned him fondly in his letters.

    I just don’t see Berri as the kind of hack that Truffaut describes in that damning essay from 1954.

    Note the group of films we’ve listed so far and consider just how diverse and eclectic it is. There’s room for Berri, just as there was room for Lelouche during the New Wave.

  8. Chris, its Les Revenants (They Came Back). French zombie flick cum critique of governmental bureaucracy. Directed by Robin Campillo who wrote Time Out.

  9. I’ll throw in a good word for Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants from the 80s and the still joyously transgressive Murmur of the Heart from the 70s.

  10. Thanks, Jeff. I’ll look for ‘Les Revenants’ when it comes out on DVD.

    Damn, this has got to be the only blog on which I feel like I have to do homework to keep up! Now I have to read Truffaut (John, is that essay in ‘Cahiers du Cinema’ or some collection?). I’m trying to find the Pauline Kael review that I was thinking of in the ‘New Yorker’ to remind myself of why it seemed to capture something for me. I vividly remember thinking that ‘Jean de Florette’ (I didn’t watch ‘Manon des Sources’) was ponderous, beautifully filmed and dull, but I probably need to give it a second chance.

  11. I’m not sure if that particular essay was reprinted in the Harvard U. Press collection, but it is a Cahiers essay. I do know you can find it in Bill Nichols’s MOVIES AND METHODS, Vol. 1.

    I just happen to be working on the New Wave with a student doing and Independent Study, so this stuff is literally right in front of me.

    You and Kael may be right…perhaps Godard would have (and did?) slam those two films. But I don’t think Truffaut would have.

  12. Kael on ‘Florette’ (from an interview):
    “It’s a way, also, of not taking the arts too seriously. It’s one of the things that I’ve tried to write about and that readers get most indignant about, because they feel you’re not being a cultivated, serious person if you talk about your pleasure at silliness, at lushness. But if I see a Jean de Florette, I die with boredom. I can’t sit there and watch Gerard Depardieu playing a hunchback and not have people realize how ridiculous it is to have a tall hunchback.”

  13. I’m confused. Isn’t Depardieu as hunchback somewhat silly (sentimentally so) and isn’t Jean de Florette about as lush as you can get?

  14. One doesn’t read Kael for consistency of logic. (Or, for that matter, for correctness of opinion.) Kael’s fun because she’s never less than energized in her opinions, right?

  15. Just watched Kontroll. I thought it was good, but ultimately a little disappointing. What Reynolds took to be an open-to-interpretation ending, I took to be a cop out. Not that I NEEDED to know if the killer was actually who it was set up to be… But it seemed to me the writer set it up one way (a lot of echoes of Fight Club in there) and then decided not to totally mimic that film, but without coming up with any other proper resolution. Perhaps deep in the heart of Hungary, he hoped that naive Minneapolis farmboys would believe that each possible ending might complement the others. (please.)

    Well, I’m from HOLLYWOOD. And I KNOW a thing or two about the MOVIES. And THIS one didn’t have a proper ending.

    I’ll also say this thread took up way too much time on the blog. Doesn’t anyone go see new movies? Bruns, isn’t that what you get paid for? Still hope to see Duma in theaters this weekend.

    But hey – why isn’t anyone else going to see History of Violence and remarking about it? Reynolds used to bring up his undergraduate “paper” on Cronenberg and Canadian film at the drop of a hat, but now he won’t write about Cronenberg’s tale of the Midwest? come on, mike, Minneapolis is a lot like Indiana. There’ll be something you can relate to in there.

    I did learn from this film that Hungarians like to spit. A lot. They’re real big on the spitting. And, thanks to this movie, I’ve decided never ever to go to Hungary under any circumstances. They’re obviously a bunch of savages, and I don’t think it’s a very nice place.

  16. Critics get paid to see new movies. I get paid to teach, and I don’t get paid enough. But this one’s for you, Mark:

    “Flightplan” is a riveting film, a heart-stopping thriller with a turn of the screw. Don’t get up until the seatbelt light is turned off! And it never goes off because “Flightplan” is one bumpy ride. Think “Panic Room” in a 737. Newbie German director Robert Schwentke is our flight commander, and he complies with all federal regulations on this one. Capt. Hitchcock would be proud.

  17. John, thanks for that review. Mauer has such trouble with ambiguity, your synopsis ought to “foster” his interest. O ho!

    And, hey–isn’t Mauer a Hungarian name? Sounds absurd enough to be Hungarian to me. Plus you have that kind of gaunt ill-mannered East-European look to you. And speaking of spit and phlegm, I recall coming home to find you burning used kleenex. More support for my Hungarian Mauer thesis.

    I don’t see new movies. I actually don’t see any movies. I read a few online reviews then post whatever the hell I want. Or refute whatever Jeff says.

  18. Wow, I hate to post on this charmer of a thread again, but last night I saw They Came Back, the French zombie/bureaucracy film, which is referenced a little in an earlier part of this thread. (I also picked up Subway, but didn’t get to watch it before it had to be returned.)

    It seems at least Jeff has seen it – what do you make of it? Unlike say, Le Samourai, I wasn’t bothered by the implausibility of it – It’s a bit of an exercise: If this happened, then what else might happen?

    Zombie movies are the easiest in their genre to make – just walk slowly and you’re more than half way there – and almost all zombie movies suck. (28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead are about the only two I’ve seen in years that are ‘good’ and Shaun is a comedy so it doesn’t really even count).

    But at heart, it’s not a zombie film at all, but the kind of meditation on mortality and purpose of life that is almost never seen in western films, let alone talked about in polite conversation. It’s the territory that the Japanese seem much more adept at, with films like Kurosawa’s Ikiru (and other Kurosawa, but that one jumps to mind) and After Life. The central question is how would you react if a loved one just came back several years after he or she died? Mourning and grief are a one-way street, and we never really have to backtrack on those feelings and the coping mechanisms that go with them.

    It’s particularly French in the way we immediately see the bureaucracy leap into action as fast as Bruce Willis would have grabbed an M-16 if the film had takeen place, or been made, in the US. In some respects it reminded me of Houellebecq, but without the sex and self-loathing. It’s not a film full of big reveals, and I certainly thought it could have been shorter with a better ending, but I enjoyed it.

    I really enjoyed Time Out, which Robin Campillo co-wrote, and this is probably not be as strong as that was, even though I’m a sucker for zombie films. Did anyone else here see this one and have any insight into it?

    Oh yeah – small note – This IS a zombie film in that it addresses societal issues. That is, zombie films seem to be the perfect vehicle for social commentary. I’ve not seen the Gulf War zombie film that was recently made where they come back to vote against GW Bush (or something), but there again – same idea. This goes back at least as far as the first Romero zombie film dealing with race and lynch mobs as well as the “consumer” zombies of Romero’s later films. Any others I’m missing? Is there a gay wedding zombie film?

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