Katalin Varga

Having already seen and very much enjoyed this director's Berberian Sound Studio and prior to seeing his latest, The Duke Of Burgundy, decided to check out this, his first feature. Glad I did, seems it didn't get a theatrical release in UK, which is a travesty. Great little film, very focused, very intense, with a stunning central performance from Hilda Peter. Problems in her village prompt her to take off with her son and traverse the Carpathians and maybe exorcise her devils. Always very good to look at, this also has what has become a Strickland trademark, amazing score. The tinkling cowbells, echoing across the fields or the creak of the horse and cart carrying them both find their way unobtrusively into the score. Always engrossing, the central sequence where the main character explains graphically what happened to her as their boat slowly spins on a lake is spellbinding and so very effective. Excellent.

Peter Strickland's debut movie Katalin Varga reminds me very much of another recent British film, Asif Kapadia's 2007 effort Far North, which is also a folk horror story about an outcast and her child. Stickland uses the dank forest of Romania instead of the perilous ice flows of the north, but the movies are birds of a feather, low budget movies intended to tap primal energies.

Children run away from Katalin Varga, a darkly pretty woman with live-wire eyes, who's altogether too spirited to remain unmolested in the time-capsuled world with which the movie presents te viewer. Folk have mobile phones, but Katalin still travels by horse-drawn cart, and men still make hay in the fields with pitchforks. Gossip in Katalin's village is poisonous enough to make Clouzot's vision in Le Corbeau appear positively made of marshmallow. Following the repurcussions of gossip regarding Katalin's past, she travels with her child into an apparently infrastructure-less hinterland on a dark mission, like black lightning.

It's no surprise to find, following shot after shot of foreboding nature scenes, that this is a tragedy, in a cul-de-sac structure similar to Monte Hellman's brilliant 1965 movie Ride in the Whirlwind.

It's a brutal movie, in structure rather than in screen violence, which there is remarkably little of, and which is generally obscured in incoherence when it occurs. It's almost senseless and left me with a directionless primitive anger.

The beautiful Transylvanian countryside, where a thin veil of modernity covers a continuing peasant lifestyle for many, is the setting for Peter Strickland's short, unsentimental film 'Katalin Varga' about the aftermath of a rape. It's a quiet movie, strikingly shot, that offers no pretence of life easier than it actually is. To me, it seemed that the reaction of the perpetrator's wife seemed simultaneously slightly overdone (in terms of motivation) and underplayed; one might also suggest that the ending is not especially satisfying, probably because the film never lets us know exactly what it is that Katalin is hoping for. This can be justified, however, because it's completely plausible that the character doesn't know herself. In a nutshell, this is a revenge movie; but so much more interesting that most of what we see in this genre.

I missed this first time round and am so glad I caught up with it at an afternoon showing at a local independent cinema. Even more encouraging was that I expected to be the only person there but, although only a smattering of people (in a large auditorium), there were enough to create an atmosphere (that may be in my head but hopefully some people will get what I mean). So, transfixed by Hilda Peter from the outset, the film moved beautifully through dreamy countryside as the revelation of a hidden secret drove Katalin and her son away from their marital home. The menacing undertone haunted their journey to remote villages, the audience waiting for the inevitable vengeance to erupt. The nature of the film and its brutal climax prompted something I love to see as the credits rolled. No one moved or spoke. If the audience is out of their seats the second the picture fades I feel either they're relieved the film has finished or have weak bladders or a drink problem. Katalin Varga was successful in conquering the audience, an endorsement of its quality. See it.

Great, atmospheric effort from Strickland. I can only imagine he had some affinity with this part of Romania whether from childhood or other. The soundtrack and some of the slow lingering shots (esp. the scene looking at child, mother and horse not moving from behind, and the forest shot) were very affecting, and reminded me of Tarkovsky (not in a bad way ;)I got to thinking of the inextricable nature of all things, of how everything (as a single glorious 'entity') was so deviously and religiously bound up that to even attempt to extract something from it was tantamount to destructuring the whole (and thus destroying its royalty). That a film can inspire me (it has to be said not single-handedly)to such ends is indicative of a deep metaphysical quality within it.There is a particular sentence that the man utters towards the end of the film that resonates deeply towards this metaphysis. I shan't explicate it, nor even repeat it, but you shall know it when you hear it.

Thanks for this Strickland, and all who were involved in and outside it (even the guy who carted the extra film stock when, presumably, you ran out ;) 'Ultimately, there are no parts at all.' Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life.