I might just use this as Kypade's fairt(bhdnwtcastfedfhs), (no relation to Andaroo's thread of the same name - coincidence, I assure you), but for now, it's gonna be dedicated to Hukkle.



Hukkle.

Hukkle.

Hukkle.

In short: A strange, dialogueless film depicting peaceful village life +; worth watching for visuals and originality if nothing else.

At length:
What do you get when you take 75 minutes of seemingly unrelated clips of everyday life in a small town, subtract from it nearly all dialog, and center it around one old man's bad case of the hiccups? Why, Hukkle, of course, an experimental masterpiece of visuals and and all around cinematic crazyness by Hungarian director György Pálfi. not to mention the fact that it has possibly the greatest title in the history of cinema.

An old man wakes up and heads outside, where he proceeds to sit for the rest of the film, hiccuping all the time. The rest of the film unravels around him, though doesn't necessarily involve him. Men play something similar to bowling; women work in the fields and cook. A funeral, a cop, a jet plane. What does it all mean, if anything more than a simple view of a simple life? I can't say much more about the plot of this fascinating film. Partly because there's little more to be found than this simple strange town; mostly, though, because I'm not sure I understood it all.

With little linear narrative to guide and its random disjointed images, its easy to get lost in Hukkle. I know the first time I watched it I sure did. Fortunately, if you do get lost, you'll be lost in an array of gorgeous, interesting, thoughtful scenes that, while perhaps not making a whole lot of sense on the surface, come together to paint a clear, interesting portrait of mundane small town existence...and perhaps something much more. But if all you get out of it is this rather simple picture, it is at the least mesmerizing and beautiful. And I'd be willing to bet you've never seen anything like it.

As a PS, a FYI and a BTW, I wrote the above a few days ago at about 1:45 AM, and had an aweful time getting anything down period. Not necessarily an excuse for how bad it sounds reading it now, but of note. Also, since then, I watched the film again, and something I had clearly missed the first time was PAINFULLY obvious and renders much of what I said meaningless. It is VERY likely that this insight is something that most people would get - perhaps it's made to be gotten; unmissable; integral to the whole of the movie. If so, I'm probably just dumb, and you'll probably view the film far differently than I initially did, as I certainly do now. But I'm defintiely not going to retype anything, because it really was hard for me to get out the first time and I'm sure it would only be worse the second. Needless to say, I at least stand by the fact that it is visually superb, fascinating, and different than anything you've seen and would HIGHLY recommend it based on that alone.

A couple things to look out for, or some things that were especially of notice, importance, power, impressiveness: the cat in the grass, the fighter jet, the film exposures, the eating xray. Coincidentally (or not?) a few of these are more towards the experimental side...hm.