You don’t need a deep, dark forest to tell an unsettling fable about the struggle for freedom or the battles waged between the shadows and the things that glow.
In “Kontroll,” Nimród Antal’s sinewy film debut, the black tunnels and nerve-jangling fluorescent lights of Budapest, Hungary’s, subway system work just fine.
In that unnatural catacomb, battered protagonist Bulscú (Sándor Csányi) might even find a fairy, or a vigilant owl, to lead him toward the light.
Bulscú is constantly wounded. There’s never an instant when he doesn’t have a caked spot or rivulet of blood on his face. When we’re introduced to him, his nose is bleeding.
“Kontroll” is an existential fable, so you can be certain Bulscú has deeper wounds. But they’re ones writer-director Antal hints at and never fully explains. Whatever they were, they drove the obviously intelligent, sensitive Bulscú underground.
One of the Budapest Public Transportation Co.’s controllers, Bulscú job is to roam the subway system making sure passengers have paid their fares.
As bold a title as it is, “Kontroll” turns out to be about anything but. It doesn’t take long to determine that for these men (there are women controllers, but they figure little in the action), order is elusive.
A black-hooded figure puts a fine point on this by slinking onto brightly lit platforms under the gaze of surveillance cameras and shoving passengers in front of trains. And an appealing troublemaker named Bootsie taunts the crews, spraying them with shaving cream.
Less dramatically, regular passengers challenge the controllers. The ragtag guys in Bulscú’s quintet enter a train, red armbands on. Soon enough, each is engaged in an absurd duel with a rider. A pimp offers one of his girls, but no ticket. A tourist couple exasperates the new guy by ducking behind the language barrier.
Bulscú approaches a pretty woman wearing a goofy bear suit. Sofie (Eszter Balla) appears in his dreams, but also his waking hours. This fare-beating bear turns out to be the daughter of Béla, a gentle, wry train conductor rumored to have been banished to the subway after a mishap in the world above.
Bulscú is right. Controllers are despised. Many are bullies, misfits and exercisers of an atrophied form of law-enforcement muscle. As Bulscú confides to Sofie, “Everybody hates us.” Ah, but they make it so easy.
Looking a bit like American actor Chris Noth, Csányi has a heavy handsome face. But nights and days spent underground have made him sallow.
“Kontroll” begins with a representative of the Budapest Public Transporation Co. awkwardly reading a statement about Antal’s film. None of the events, locations or the characters can be related to anything real about the company, he states. Then he adds, the director “is really interested in the struggle between good and evil.”
As the movie wends its way toward an open-ended conclusion, even that bureaucratic disclaimer takes on the fantastic hue of Antal’s grimy, compelling fable.
“Kontroll”
***
R for language, some violence and brief sexuality|1 hour, 46 minutes|DRAMA|Written and directed by Nimród Antal; in Hungarian with subtitles; photography by Gyula Pados; starring Sándor Csányi, Eszter Balla, Bence Matyássy, Lajos Kovács, Csaba Pindroch, Zsolt Nagy |Opens today at the Chez Artiste.
