Hukkle – Director Gyorgy Palfi – 2002 (Hungary)
Somewhere between a nature film and a murder mystery, lies “Hukkle”, the debut film of Gyorgy Palfi (Taxidermia). The film follows the residents of a small Hungarian village, both human and non-human, and begins with an extreme close-up of a snake moving around in the rocks above the village, before the camera takes us in to “meet” the residents.
We have an old man with constant hiccups, content to sit on a decrepit bench outside his cottage and watch the world go by. We have a shepherdess (with a Walkman) and her flock of sheep. We have a man and his pig (we are treated to an extreme close up of its testicles for a time) as they travel around the village to impregnate sows. And, we have what appears to be some kind of family gathering, although something rather odd happens there and the viewer is never quite sure what was intended.
We are also treated to a mole in its tunnel, as it blindly finds an earthworm and snags it, moments before it’s killed by an old woman with a hoe, who throws it over a fence where its eaten by a dog. We watch a frog as it paddles along only to be snagged by a fish, and that’s moments before the fish is hooked and reeled in, but not before we notice that there’s a dead body at the bottom of the pond. A threshing machine comes in to work the grain fields and as it moves along we see, hidden from view of the driver, a deer hidden deep in the grain…..and it seems the director then focuses on the truck into which the grain is being blown, kind of teasing us….will deer suddenly be part of the mix? Also at one point it appears there’s an earthquake rattling the entire town but it’s an extremely low flying jet that is rather shocking to see in this setting.
But let’s move back to the family gathering. Someone has obviously died, but was it natural causes? Something that the old woman preparing the dinner does is rather suspicious, and when putting out leftovers for pets afterward one is stricken, but it’s doubtful THAT was her intent.
And there is a policeman who seems to be carrying on an investigation, and he seems to have come across something that puzzles him, but what is it?
There is virtually no dialog in this film. What little there is consists of background conversations which are not key to what‘s going on. And what IS going on? Hard to say, really. “Hukkle” is rather a playful film, but it also has an underlying sinister theme and I don’t know if repeated viewings would make it any clearer as to what may have happened. At any rate, it is a very interesting film, quite entertaining and not just a little weird. And “Hukkle” (the title) does not actually mean anything, it is an onomotopoeia for a hiccup.
Sam
