HEALING
by
Douglas Messerli
Ildikó
Enyedi (writer and director) Testről és lélekről (On Body and Soul) / 2017
Hungarian
filmmaker, Ildikó Enyedi’s 2017 film, On Body and Soul—nominated for the Best
Foreign Film for the Academy Awards is a rather problematic film, and certainly
is not a movie that I might recommend to everyone. First of all, the location
of the film is in an Hungarian slaughterhouse, which although it is kept clean
and appears to have careful oversight and modern techniques (one of the central
figures, Mária [Alexandra Borbély] has been recently hired as a temporary
quality inspector), the film nonetheless does show convincing scenes of cows
being slaughtered, and comments on the fact that some of its employees, and
certainly visitors (including a policeman) might find it difficult to endure.
Secondly, its central characters are not
particularly appealing. Mária, as some critics have noted, appears to be
autistic and is so precise in her behavior that, at moments she appears almost
to be an automaton. If nothing else, the icy blonde wants little to do with her
fellow employees, eating and standing apart from them, hardly ever
fraternizing.
Her boss, Endre (Géza Morcsányi) watches
his employees out of a high window almost like a voyeur and, also, is more than
a little stand-offish. If María seems to be mentally crippled, Endre has quite
literally loss the use of his left hand. We never discover the causes of either
of their afflictions—Enyedi is careful to keep their pasts a mystery—but we do
realize that they are both inordinately shy and weary of human communication.
On top of these difficulties, this pair
soon discover something that is simply inexplicable: they have been unknowingly
sharing the same dreams. A robbery from a medicine cabinet, which leads to
calling in a company psychologist, alerts them to the fact, as she accuses them
of collaborating to undermine her techniques. Between themselves they corroborate
the fact by writing down their most recent dream and handing the texts to one
another: they match.
Although beautifully filmed, the dreams
are certainly not very impressive. In all of them, Endre is an antlered deer
and Mária a doe, who together simply are foraging in a snowy forest, finding a
few leaves on which to nibble, and drinking from a small lake and stream. The
only contact between them occurs as they touch noses or briefly interlock their
heads. There is no mating, no sudden movements, and no violence—so different
from the world in which they work.
Obviously, their interlocking dreams
brings them together, particularly since it appears as an almost mystical-like
experience not able to be explained (in fact, to the psychologist they admit
they have collaborating, just to quiet further speculation and observation).
Yet at the same time these two have been so completely maimed by previous
relationships, that they both pull away, and when they do try to get together,
the places they have once inhabited are now empty and quite meaningless. Even
Endre’s formerly favorite restaurant is empty and the service is similarly rudimentary.
Perhaps, we later learn, he had to many women, and she loved one, unforgiving
man, too much.
In an even odder development, Mária, after seeming to reject Endre’s advances,
attempts to maim herself by cutting the same arm which Endre has lost. The
visual images of blood and possible suicide recall the film’s early images of
the innocent beasts’ deaths. But a sudden telephone message from Endre saves
her, and the film ends with the final sexual encounter that seems to have been
missing from the deer dreams that both have long shared.
Finally, there is mutual satisfaction, and
the two troubled animals can simply fall to sleep, with Endre’s maimed hand
firmly wrapped around Mária’s torso. The two have finally found a way to break
out of the cold forest’s embrace and move into a deeper world of human love.
Los Angeles, February
21, 2018
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