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Buharov Brothers
Hungarian pair of film-makers, Nándor Hevesi and Kornél Szilágyi, going under the name of Buharov. Although their films are often described as surreal and portraying dreams, their primary genre, in my opinion, is experimental cinema. Their approach is nihilistic, untamed, Dadaistic, free-form, free-association, complete and utter random nonsense. Their films have an improvised quality, and consist of a series of snippets and ideas, sometimes taken from dreams, each of which feels like it belongs in a different movie. Later films may use themes to loosely tie some of this randomness together, but earlier films don't even offer that. There is frequent use of social and political commentary, as well as random references to new-age ideas, the occult, supernatural or psychic phenomena, sci-fi, and so on, all adding to the strangeness. The splicing together of all of these elements eventually give your brain the impression that you are observing messy snippets of people's dreams, although the effect is more experimental than oneiric. Reviewed until 2016. The Buharov Brothers create another hodgepodge of chaotic scenes, this one broadly based on themes of social unrest and criticism of political leadership. But, as usual, the directors go into free-form style, splicing together scores of snippets of ideas and skits, some of them more absurd and bizarre than others. There are authoritarian leaders, politicians that talk openly about doubling-down on their inept and draconian policies, revolutionaries that become obsessed with the revolution, but also a variety of anti-authoritarian and egalitarian citizens, fighting against secrets and systems. Amongst other things, children are shown to literally flush their votes down a toilet. But there are also bizarre cults that perform strange rituals to do with consciousness and sperm, people in caveman outfits reverting to Mad Max anarchy, meditating jobless bums, an actual regime machine, a man who literally emerges from the grave to implement his ideas, potshots at the church, random paranoia and weird spy games, and many other strange scenes and people that are meant to be funny but you're not always sure what the joke is about. As usual with Buharov, things reach a peak of bizarre randomness towards the end and the film doesn't much add up to anything, though this one has more absurd entertaining comedy than their previous fever-dream nonsensical films. This debut is by far the most random and nonsensical film made by the Buharov Brothers, and that's saying a lot. If you try to extract any meaning or even themes from this, you will get a headache. There are random interactions between random people, except their dialogue is almost all non-sequitur nonsense. Here is a sample: "I'm disappointed too. The cold seed is in me. And I've almost achieved zero smell. I pulled my sledge out to the square." Scenes are completely random as well. Some of them include strange masked people in a graveyard and in other locations, a priest dreams of a nasty cake falling from the sky with a telephone cord inside it, a man abuses a hamster, a man drags a sled in a desolate landscape, a naked man does pull-ups next to a naked goat, a man nonchalantly handles news of his child's death and carries him around, and so on. Don't think this is some kind of fun Chien Andalou Dada art, however, as it is more experimental and obnoxiously anti-coherency than surreal, though the strange scenes and couple of dreams make it slightly surreal experimental nonsense. To be honest, I can't make heads or tails of this one, to the extent that I can't tell if it was trying to be surreal, or merely experimental. It definitely feels surreal towards the end however, as if someone had grabbed snippets from five people's dreams and spliced them together randomly. Or, it may be just riffing and improvising on supernatural themes, and on how life can be absurd to the point of actually being unreal. At the center of this hodgepodge of experimental scenes, is a young man who has become paralyzed for no particular reason. He is visited and confronted by various people, his wife gives up on him and leaves him in the care of an old lady, and he is visited by spirits and ghosts. He is also shown random footage of other people, some going on and on over a sudden random death in a pool, and other older people dating and discussing life and whether it may be a dream. There is also a young boy visited by random dreams and given psychic powers, and a strange sleeping experiment presided over by some priest. From one point of view, this is just a hodgepodge of shorts on the theme of accidents and the supernatural that never add up to anything. But the way it was all spliced together sneaks up on you like a (very messy) dream. I can't say I got anything out of it though. There's a scientist who speaks in gobbledygook and, among other things, claims to have invented a Zero-Time algorithm. There are strange experiments on the local population to do with mind control and obedience. There's a folk-tale about a woman who drinks water from the local pool and months later gives birth to a creature. Somehow, this creature ties in with the experiments. People play strange games, some of which involve death, there's more gobbledygook about mental sexual health, other galaxies, and dark soldiers, strange mutations, and a bizarre local story about a deformed child, a young woman and a dog are experimented on, nonsensical instructions are given, and so on. This is absolute random nonsense spliced together randomly, possibly on themes of dystopia, government, science, tall tales, and sci-fi, but even that would be pushing broad themes onto random nonsense. It's not even surreal, as that would require a dreamer's psyche as an anchor. To be fair, the terrible subtitles may have contributed greatly to the nonsense, but I doubt it. |
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