Kontroll (aka Control) (Hungary) (2003)

[oscar jubis]

An actual transit worker introduces the film by warning us not to confuse Kontroll's characters and their antics with actual Hungarian ticket inspectors and their modus operandi. I guess there are potential filmgoers out there who'd confuse anything in this grungy pulp fantasy with reality. Pulp fantasies can be fun though. Those who've read my posts know that, although not enamored of films like Kill Bill, Oldboy and Sin City, they've provided me with entertainment and diversion. I wasn't expecting to learn anything about real life or real people from Kontroll. I just wanted an engaging, fun movie with an original idea or two. What I got was a derivative one full of recycled bad taste. The gimmick of setting the action entirely underground wore off quickly. One is left with a series of chases, fights and showdowns and a lot of pissing, bleeding and puking.

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Kontroll has come in for some incredible abuse for its "callous violence" and "smart-ass humor;" it's even been accused of heralding (with Oldboy) a yet further decline into nihilistic, anti-human techno-hipness. And maybe that's true.

I think it is. Hoberman also accurately points out Antal being "tickled by the release of bodily fluids". Not a problem per se, but Antal's film is bereft of substance and originality. Like arsaib4 (who liked Kontroll to some extent), I wouldn't be surprised to find Antal back where he was born and raised, directing a Hollywood sequel.

[Chris Knipp]

I can't expect you to like the movie, but since you chose to post your remarks here right after my review rather than just on your own personal film journal thread, I wish you'd given some more consideration to the positive things I and others have said about Kontorll, and in so doing, granted that it might have something going for it -- a conventional debating device, to give a nod to one's opponents and concede a few points to the opposition. It makes it look like you're broad minded. It can actually weaken your opponent's position more than a blind negation of what he's said. I had to do that for Sin City, which I surely must have disliked as much as you disliked this. As it is, you quoted me so far out of context I don't see why you bothered to quote me at all. Let's look at what I actually wrote.

Kontroll has come in for some incredible abuse for its "callous violence" and "smart-ass humor;" it's even been accused of heralding (with Oldboy) a yet further decline into nihilistic, anti-human techno-hipness. And maybe that's true. But how come the plot feels so sweet and positive? There must be some uniquely Hungarian schizophrenia at play here. Beyond the constant but largely ineffectual action is a dark comedy and a boychick-meets-girlchick story with some horror and a symbolic war of good and evil going on, in which the good wins and the languishing hero, a kind of sallow prince charming, finds his damsel and turns away from darkness toward the light. It's like some dark gooey pastry with a delicate dab of sweet custard at the core

I can't see that you dealt with that. Not only is your post not detailed enough to be considered a review, or a reply to mine; it's also a distortion of what I said; it links the film with other films it has no real connection to; and it links you with (1) a good critic at a less than brilliant moment (Hoberman) and an over-the-top one (Armond White) in one of his more extreme recent declarations. If you want to link yourself with White that's your choice, if an odd one for someone as mild mannered and generous as yourself. But I wish you'd considered the other side and replied to some of my positive points about Kontroll to justify posting right after my review. I can tell you that Sin City for me was not "fun." But for me just to say that wouldn't be a review either. Somehow my feeling is that for you Kill Bill I and II were not "entertainment and diversion," though you may have asserted that they were, I don't remember. These generalizations of yours seem somewhat carelessly made, as if you didn't expect me to bother to answer; you'd have spent your time better saying something more specific and enlightening about Kontroll.

In that brief, somewhat ambiguious, and not very impressive review, Hoberman, whom you also quote out of context, hedges his bets by ending with a denigration, but making this callously neutral opening statement:

The most successful Magyar movie of the 21st century, Nimr Antal's Kontroll is an energetic piece of pulp fiction that, still working with old-fashioned film stock and locations, constructs its allegorical Sin City of Dreadful Night in the depths of the Budapest subway system.

This is not the excellent JH at his best. Nor it this post you at your best either.

[oscar jubis]

*I think it's good policy to post comments on a film's thread, if there is one, so that those who've seen it and posted before receive notice and have a chance to respond.
*I quoted the lines on your review that relate to my own experience of watching this movie (other than paragraphs that provide description and exposition which, as usual, are accurate, well-written, and fun to read).
*I think those 175-200 words I wrote are more "ink" than Kontroll deserves, given that I derived only miniscule pleasure and no edification from watching it. My reaction to it is so different than yours that I'm struggling to find a way to pursue a meanigful exchange here but I'll try. This "dab of sweet custard" maybe relates to Bela's scene with her daughter and a scene in which he shares lunch with Bulcsu. Two brief ones that appear well into the movie. I never managed to come up with theories as to why Bulcsu lives underground, no clues are provided into what's wrong with him. He remained an enigma. His romance with the girl in the Bunny suit (why?) seemed tacked-on. Are we to assume Bulcsu was just lonely, or devoid of affection and needed a partner to come out of the dark into the light?

[Chris Knipp]

The only trouble is that your post tends to stop discussion rather than encourage it, of Kontroll. Thanks for the favorable comment on my review-writing, but saying you're restricting yourself to your own response is a dodgy thing to say when you've damning a movie in general terms. When we differ most stongly it looks like it's because you look for ideas or moral positions or subject matters or sensitivities that you like in a movie and when you find them you're strongly biased in favor, regardless of other factors, and vice versa.

You devoted enough "ink" to the movie, you just didn't get into the positive elements I'd described or explain why they didn't matter, if you'd grant they're there.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
When we differ most stongly it looks like it's because you look for ideas or moral positions or subject matters or sensitivities that you like in a movie and when you find them you're strongly biased in favor, regardless of other factors, and vice versa.

As I pointed out on my first post here, films like Kill Bill, Old Boy and Sin City, which most definitely do not present "moral positions/subject matter/sensitivities that I like" provided me with entertainment and diversion, which I didn't get from Kontroll. I didn't find the latter offensive, just crass, boring and unoriginal (other than it being set entirely underground).

[Chris Knipp]

Too bad. More adjectives.