Dealer

A day in the life of a drug dealer. We stay with the young man from the moment he wakes up until the next morning. The story is constructed principally around episodes, each dealing with a client or a visit to a friend or family member. Chronological order is followed without flashbacks. A couple of the episodes become interlocked threads that provide the core of the dramatic tension. The episodes run over a wide gamut of situations. From the darkly comic to the heart wrenching.

Location is some undefined large city. The urban landscape is modern and sterile, eerily devoid of people and crowds. The state apparatus and its authorities nowhere to be seen and only implied from dialogue. The film traffics only in the dealer, the junkies that he supplies, and a few friends and relatives. The issue of drug addiction, primarily heroin, is dealt in a level-headed fashion, almost matter-of-fact. Nonetheless, the burden of addiction on the individual, friends and relatives is not hidden.

The primary technique used throughout is circular tracking. The camera circles around characters, often a few times in a single take. Combined with a heavy use of close-ups, the overall experience is claustrophobic. The siege of the camera on the characters enhances the feeling they are prisoners of their unfortunate conditions.

The visual texture is that of a noir, though the dominant hue is blue, dark blue. Reds and greens are rarely seen. This color choice overlaid on a modernistic architecture and a spartan decor give the story a futuristic feel, a sort of post-industrial dysfunctional society where seeing a person smash a car's windshield on the highway or the presence of a dead man's body on a bridge with no police in sight does not seem to raise much of an eyebrow from passersby.

All of this is enveloped by a deep echo chamber meditative music. The events of the day keep piling up into a general sense of pointlessness. There is no promise of anything better for next day's aurora, only another cycle of the same. The only escape for the dealer is a closure of a kind.

I'm not terribly familiar with contemporary Hungarian cinema, but from what I gather Dealer appears to be the work of one of its most promising figures. Cinematography, rhythm (to some extent), nuances, symbolism; Fliegauf seems to have a grasp of all of these. Dealer isn't a masterpiece in my mind, though.

The acting is far from impeccable at parts. For example, when the dealer's female friend is talking to her boyfriend on the phone, you don't even get the impression that someone else is on the other line. You sense that the actor is more concerned with her English than playing her part. And even though the dealer's emasculate voice reflects a person not much less fragile than those he provides drugs to, I'm still not sure if the actor possesses all the brooding characteristics required for the role. The parts with his father and supposed child work to a tee, however.

As for the film being too long or too slow, I disagree. Still, a few more rhythmic change-ups would've been welcome. The dialogue reminded me a bit of Kaurismäki with its subtle humor and focus on only what's essential. The Tarkovski comparisons aren't far-fetched, either; with the ending striking up images of Solaris. Another Tarkovski-like trait the director has is his willingness to let things take their time. These precious moments when "nothing happens" allow the viewer to reflect on what he's seen and what's yet to come. The ambiance, the colors, the streets of the city the dealer travels by bike, and the way the director explores his theme, all of these assure that Dealer will stay with me for a while. Extra points for the song that closes the film.

You might like Fliegauf's "Dealer" maybe if you haven't seen his earlier films. They are all clones, of which "Dealer" is at least the 4th of a kind, the others being "Is there life before death?", "Talking Heads" and "Rengeteg". His films use the same schema: extremely long close-ups of monologues. You can call this a "personal style", but it is also a trade-off for creativity and experimenting.

The reason why "Dealer" has been so successful in Hungary and elsewhere is probably because the issue of drugs is overpoliticised and it has been de facto taboo. In the last decade or so there have been very few Hungarian films on this topic, all of them were depicting drugs (undifferentiatedly) as the ultimate evil. "Dealer" certainly has a different approach, because it makes you mostly laugh at, and/or - to a lesser extent - feel sorry for drug users, whereas the other movies were intended mostly to make you hate drugs (and/or - to a lesser extent - also feel sorry for drug users). So this movie suits for both pro-drug and anti-drug people, because of not making any clear statements about the issue. It is yet to be seen whether Fliegauf or any other Hungarian director could make an intelligent and socially significant impact on the issue of drugs in Hungary.

This film really is pretty slow, but the atmosphere is so strong and depressive, that it simply can't be boring. I enjoyed every second of the movie and I really love the slow camera movement and the concrete, although not naturalistic dialogues. In this things nothing is showed as we can see it in the real life, but at the same time, everything in this film is completely true. The things work, and they are seen from a completely different point of view as in other drug-films. This film really shows a prototype of a new dealer. We can't talk about characters, they are prototypes, but they are made perfectly. The mood of the film is fascinating, meditating and exciting. Those bizarre sounds... I mean, in this film, everything is in it's right place, I've never seen another so clear and original film, with a complex view of a problem. This is why I love this movie.

Gradually, I've come to appreciate slowness in cinema. I'm getting sort of fed up with action-packedness, video clip-like editing and the fact that if for ten seconds no one speaks on the screen the audience starts chatting, because obviously, there is nothing important going on.

However, I do not think much of this film of Fliegauf Benedek. I appreciated hist last piece (Rengeteg), I liked it's sketch-based structure, the amateur freshness of acting and especially the language, which is farther to the artistic, created language of the Hungarian cinema in the last couple of decades than anything I've seen for a long time. Now, in Dealer all this are present, but they rather work against the movie. The actors are terribly, incredibly bad (consider Barbara or the mathematician girl). If this is conscious than it is simply BAD. The language is terribly artificial - and there is no meaning for this at all. They usually quote that Dealer is slow and beautiful. I think, you have to be a very good director to be able to direct a slow film that works. For me this wasn't slow, but boring. I reckon, I understand why he wanted to make it so slow, but then there has to be something else to keep the movie alive - most favorably actors. Who act. All in all, I think this film is repulsively artificial, pretentious and pretty much forced.