Apertura De Nuevos Mercados

In Jancsó’s early films, style always followed pre-established concepts that his films articulated. The contemporary Jancsó builds on the characteristic stylistic elements he developed more than thirty years ago, but the narrative function of the moving camera underwent significant changes. Surprising audiences and critics, the then seventy-seven year old director started an entirely new cycle of films in 1998. Not only did he break with the historical topics of his early films, but teaming up with director-cinematographer Ferenc Grunwalsky and writer Gyula Hernády, Jancsó developed a modified narrative strategy and visual style as well. Since 1998, he made six sequels to The Lord’s Lantern, which are all based on the adventures of the two characters Kapa and Pepe. In the first film of the cycle, the two men are gravediggers shot and killed multiple times, but they are resurrected every time to find themselves reborn in the typical figures of the late 1990s Budapest. This allows Jancsó to give an overview of the contemporary, post- socialist Hungary and account for the social-cultural changes that happened in the country after the fall of the socialist regime.

Jancsó never really cared about developing plausible story lines and explaining the motivations behind the actions of his characters. Neither did the director establish a recognizable causal connection between the elements of his films’ fabulas. However, the pre-1998 films all had some degree of cohesion or linearity: most Jancsó films used the framework of asymmetrical power relations to express how oppression or violence is

inextricably connected to the human nature. Even though not much happens in an early Jancsó film in the classical Hollywood sense, the situations he depicts develop linearly; they have beginning and an end so that the director can portray the constant shifts of power as in The Conversation or The Red and the White.

The Lord’s Lantern breaks with this narrative strategy and unfolds along a series of very loosely connected episodes where only the characters of the two protagonists connect the different parts. The title of the film is actually a reference to a popular tale in Hungary in which the main character cannot be murdered since he received a lantern from the Lord that prevents him from getting killed by his enemies. The two gravediggers are shot multiple times in the film only to be resurrected as greedy entrepreneurs, corrupt businessmen or politicians, brutal and violent policemen, security guards, or simply as gravediggers again. In each episode, they return to their initial profession and comment on the events unfolding and their new characters. In this sense the gravedigger figures partially stand outside the diegetic world, since they talk about their own personae as filmic characters. But Jancsó also breaks the narrative transparency of the film by including himself and writer Gyula Hernády in several scenes of the film as themselves, talking to Kapa and Pepe. The level of reflexivity and the constantly shifting position of the narration in The Lord’s Lantern make the fabula of the film hard to follow. There are no clear connections between episodes, which also interrupts the continuity between Jancsó’s characters’ actions. It also becomes hard to distinguish between the direct commentaries of the director about the film that he is making, the director’s figure

Miklós Jancsó as a filmic character149

, or the metteur en scène of the film The Lord’s Lantern in Budapest.

András Murai has called Jancsó’s new narrative strategy disnarration.150

He describes the Kapa-Pepe cycle as films that, in a modernist way, break with logical connections of time, space and causality to emphasize that the caricature-characters of the director portray a similar situation as his early historical films: asymmetrical power relations, unfair distribution of wealth and goods, and a new unbalance between the rich and the poor. However, in the new films he does not even develop a more or less

comprehensible linear frame story: only episodes remain that may or may not connect. The director introduces the new oppressors and new oppressed, who have adapted their methods to the circumstances and requirements of “wild” capitalism in the East-Central region of Europe in 1989. The director’s old theme has hardly changed. The factor of the disappearing censorship might also have contributed to the disintegrating narrative strategies of Jancsó. During the socialist system, he had to disguise his commentaries about the unfair political situation he witnessed as historical stories. This allowed him to defend his films in face of the Socialist censorship in the 1960s and 1970s as ones that do not criticize the system. Hungarian audiences read his films as hidden observations on the Soviet oppression.

In the contemporary Hungary there is no need anymore to speak symbolically or in historical parables. The socialist censorship is gone. The freedom of expression in Jancsó’s latest films causes his narratives to fall into several episodes: he does not bother with creating cohesive tales anymore that hide the direct historical aspects of his art. But

149 _{Wong Kar-Wai also includes his artistic persona in 2046, although in somewhat different form. Chapter} 4 analyzes Kar-Wai’s reflexive gestures in depth.

the visual style that he developed with cinematographer Grunwalsky carries with it a large amount of information that the non-communicative narration withholds. Style tells more about the characters’ relation to other characters and their environment than any of the dialogue. In Jancsó’s current films, the visual style of the film remains a crucial element that provides one of the few connections between the films’ episodes. Kapa and Pepe, whether they are powerful and wealthy businessmen or poor gravediggers, are really just oppressors and oppressed in the same character throughout the entire film, but the framings, compositions and camera movements will make this statement, not any of the characters.

The compositions and the camera’s mobility narratively play a different part in this film than in Jancsó’s early work. In his late 1960s films he was visually more interested in the dynamics of groups, which can be seen in the choreography of the character- and camera movements. The relative lack of close-ups that goes hand in hand with the refusal to account for the psychology of his figures created an atmosphere where individuality was pushed to the background. Jancsó’s new visual style builds heavily on the experiences and earlier work of his new cinematographer Grunwalsky, whose films (Small but Strong (1989), The Return (1999)) put much heavier emphasis on the

subjectivity of the characters. This subjectivity does not mean that the motivations of the characters are explained in a classical way: rather the close-ups of the faces are used as compositional elements of the formalist choreography in The Lord’s Lantern.

The opposites and contrasts of Jancsó’s early binary style change into an aesthetic of the face where each shot and camera movement is anchored to the figures’ faces visible in the frame. Displaying continuity in the usage of the moving camera, however,

the director uses the faces in dualistic ways in his compositions. Also, the regular linear or circular tracking shots, which characterized The Red and the White, change into a much more irregular, shaky handheld style. Grunwalsky records most of his shots with a handheld camera that allows him to get disturbingly close to his characters. The way the characters’ faces move across the frame will define the trajectory of the camera

movement: Grunwalsky maintains the closed form of the faces’ arrangement throughout the mobile shots. In this sense, the actors’ and actresses’ mobility is the central concept behind the mise-en-scène of The Lord’s Lantern. The different areas of the frame play a more important part in the style of the contemporary Jancsó than earlier. Left and right, the upper and the lower regions of the frame are used expressively, which was not a typical composing strategy of the early Jancsó. If the dualism or dichotomy of the director’s late 1960s films was expressed via the long takes, the large distances kept between camera and characters and the tracking shots that all created contrast between the different groups, Jancsó’s revised visual style still aims at expressing the binary relations between oppressors and oppressed. This time, however, the distance between camera and actors or actresses decreases dramatically, and tracking shots change into handheld shots. The interactions between the figures in the scenes outline the blueprints for the shots’ choreographies.

In this sense, Jancsó’s objectivity and the refusal to account for character

psychology changes into a subjectivity in the director’s style that is still very formalistic and conceptual. One could argue that the spectator still does not learn much about

motivations in The Lord’s Lantern, but she gets the opportunity to observe the characters’ faces from a small distance. This geometrical-visual arrangement of the faces narratively

plays a similar role to the ways the director moved the groups of soldiers and the camera in The Red and the White. Jancsó’s visual style builds on his four decades long

experiences as a filmmaker, and his adapted composing strategies are the continuations of a choreography he developed early on in his career. The new visual style is a

synthetization of the schemas he has worked with during the 1960s and ever since in modified forms. The figurative codes in Jancsó’s changing visual style point out that conceptually the director seems to be making similar statements in The Red and the White and in The Lord’s Lantern in Budapest. What changes is the technique used for expressing the concept of power imbalance. The elements of his new visual style go back to the norms and schemes of his early art. The lack of political restraints in Jancsó’s latest films causes his narratives to explore how an impersonal public sphere gave place to a more subjective, personal arena where he identifies surprisingly similar conflicts and character types as he did in his early films. According to the director, the political oppressors of the socialist system have transformed into capitalist oppressors. In his new films, he is interested in observing the faces of his characters and how the political invades the personal space of the individuals. The figurative elements of Jancsó’s contemporary style arise from an interaction of his own earlier schemas and the contemporary political realities surrounding the creation of the film.

The new visual strategy emphasizes the faces in every composition and frames each shot corresponding to their formal arrangement. In the mobile shots, the path of the face moving across the frame marks the trajectory of the camera movement. The characters occupying opposite corners of the picture frame depict different attitudes that the filmmakers satirizes. Instead of explaining why the characters commit certain acts,

the director arranges their faces into binary pairs so the handheld camera movements and the mise-en-scène fill in the unaccounted aspects of the characters’ motivations.

This strategy is introduced early in the film, where the director and writer Gyula Hernády meet the main characters of the film. They get together in the cemetery where Kapa and Pepe work as gravediggers and sit around a table. The handheld camera frames the scene so that the faces are arranged geometrically using the corners of the frame. Jancsó and Hernády’s faces occupy the right and the left bottom corners. We never see them frontally: they appear in an over-the-shoulder shot, which creates the impression that the director and the writer are looking at the characters just like the spectator of the film. In front of them (and us), Pepe in a hat converses with one of the killers, who sits behind Hernády on the left side. Several elements in the composition guide the attention of the viewer towards the left part of the frame: first of all, the direction in which Pepe is looking from the middle of the frame. But the handheld camera also slowly moves over to the left to stop on a composition that is again marked by several faces in the corners [1].

3.15 The Lord’s Lantern: The handheld shot from over the shoulder of the creators of the film moves left to frame the killer

In the scene, Jancsó (with white hair on the right) and Hernády (wearing glasses on the left) are looking at the man who killed them (Zsolt, in black shirt) along with the viewer. Their faces in the extreme foreground of the shot are positioned against the other characters. The camera moves left to bring in Zsolt, who introduces himself as the manager of the killers. “I do not even have a gun!” he says. The director casts himself (not entirely without irony) as a victim in the foreground and the new oppressors (the manager) as the killers in the background. The binary here is established using different planes in the composition. Moving uninterruptedly, the handheld camera keeps the dualistic composition intact throughout the shot.

Jancsó also uses the corners of the frame expressively in the moving shots. Victims and killers will occupy opposite corners in the scene. The group in the cemetery continues to chat, and after the waiter has served up their drinks, Jancsó and Hernády leave. The director shakes hand with the killer-manager and walks away. As Pepe turns around and walks over to the right side of the frame, the camera moves to the right [2]. A shooter appears in the background and kills Jancsó and Hernády. Zsolt looks at the scene with an emotionless expression from the opposite corner. After the shots are fired, Pepe attacks Zsolt, grabs him and shouts why the two old men had to be killed. He laconically answers that in his profession, there are no questions like that. “They were on the list!” This binary exists with respect to the opposite corners throughout the handheld shot.

3.16 The Lord’s Lantern: The handheld camera adjusts to the action framing with the faces in the corners of the shot

The aesthetics used here also creates dualities or opposites in the frame. Instead of linear and circular character or camera movements, the left and right sides of the frame and foreground and background create a visual dualism. This dualism is not as objective and impartial as in the long- or extreme long shots typical for Jancsó’s early films. In The Lord’s Lantern it is important for Jancsó that the frame follows the action in a handheld shot, which creates a much more subjective atmosphere than a smoothly moving tracking shot. The movement here follows the action creating two layers: the first in the extreme foreground with several characters in an over-the-shoulder type position, and in the background where Zsolt appears in [1] or with the shooter in [2]. The slight camera movements are reserved for the adjustments to maintain the formal pattern with the faces in the corners.

This binary subjectivity becomes meaningful in light of Zsolt’s words. It does not matter why the two old men had to be killed; they were simply on the list. The film creates two types of characters. The first group looks at violence, selfishness and brutality as the natural and necessary means to achieve their goals. Zsolt is the first representative of the film who lives and acts according to that attitude. The opposite group is exasperated at the immorality of these actions and reacts in outrage. Kapa and Pepe’s characters as gravediggers stand for this attitude. When Pepe attacks Zsolt [2], the camera slightly adjusts the frame to reveal the two clashing positions. Even here, the two men’s faces occupy opposite corners. From the aspect of character subjectivity, the handheld close-ups are crucial. The two different groups of characters could not be established using Jancsó’s 1960s visual strategies. The large distances between camera and actors and actresses would not allow the viewer to observe their faces, on which the expressions (of the outraged characters) or the lack of expressions (of the laconic characters) are important for the conceptual aims of the film.

According to Jancsó, the political-social climate of the late 1990s gave birth to an attitude that looks at violence and oppression as completely natural. His film (and the entire Kapa-Pepe cycle) depicts this clash of different attitudes: ones that naturalize violence and greed and others that express mistrust and disbelief in face of the changing situation. While during the forty years of Socialist rule the oppression was of political nature, during the “wild” capitalism of the 1990s the different social classes are organized around pure wealth and power that pretends to be apolitical. Jancsó in his contemporary films wants us to observe the faces of these characters who are members of the new “ruling classes.” Clearly this social commentary can be read as the depiction of characters

who act according to the perceived necessity of their own success: by respecting other’s individuality or humanity or by disrespecting both. The interesting twist to this scheme is that most characters in The Lord’s Lantern die and are reborn in characters who act according to the opposite value system. Kapa and Pepe in some scenes are gravediggers who use conventional morality to judge other characters’ actions, but in others they are insensitive, Machiavellian entrepreneurs/politicians quickly ordering the death of figures who stand in their way. This strategy first compares the characters by setting up symbolic codes (comparison of the two sides) and later moves on to semantic-referential units. Jancsó’s political diagnosis is fairly pessimistic: he sees the same attitudes of ignorance, intolerance and oppression as in the previous decades. The powerful aspect of these scenes arises from the disturbing closeness between camera (and viewer) and the characters’ faces. While the new “entrepreneurs” in Hungary are the figures from the past, their power is not based on the political sphere but on their material wealth. They pretend to be different characters in the face of the public. This is why in The Lord’s Lantern the viewer has to look at the characters from a minimal distance. This is why Jancsó relies on the close-ups systematically and creates a new mobile visual style on