in association with

NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE OF INDIA, PUNE

monthly archive screening

on 28th october 2007,

9.30 am

at

savitha theatre, ernakulam

Jézus Krisztus horoszkópja (1988)

(horoscope of jesus christ)

90 min /Hungary /Hungarian with engilsh subtitles/Colour
Director:Miklós Jancsó
Writers:Gyula Hernádi ,Miklós Jancsó
Cast : Juli Básti ( Juli ), György Cserhalmi ( Jozef K. ), Ildikó Bánsági ( Márta ), Dorottya Udvaros ( Kata), András Bálint( Inspector ), László Gálffi ( Inspector ), András Kozák ( Inspector ), Ottilia Borbáth ( Matild ), Júlia Baló ( Reporter ), György Fehér ( Zoltán Merse)….

TV screens become the central feature of Jézus Krisztus horoszkópja and take on a major thematic significance which was merely latent in the previous film. The main character, played by György Cserhalmi, a mainstay of many of Jancsó's films of this period, and identified near the end of the film as "Joseph Kaffka" ( sic) goes through a series of mysterious relationships with three women—Marta, whom he may or may not have murdered; Kata, a fomer policewoman who may have killed Marta and framed him for the murder; and Juli, a nurse who is often seen being interviewed on TV about the Stalinist show trials of the 1950s (Kata's grandfather was apparently one of the victims of these).
The Stalinist and Soviet-dominated past is pervasive in the film, resulting no doubt from the new freedom to examine this enjoyed by Hungarian filmmakers in the era of glasnost. A man reads lengthy extracts from Stalin and Lenin to old men in a café; references are made to the Soviet show trials of Bukharin and others in the 1930s, and to the Hungarian versions inaugurated by the dictatorial Rákosi in the 1950s; Nikita Krushchev is seen in a mixture of actual and fake documentary footage in the context of a programme about the Soviet repression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution; and background TV screens contain interviews about political imprisonment and execution in the 1950s.

Yet, the present does not seems to have escaped totally from the terrors of the past. The film opens with an anonymous man undergoing a beating, then being questioned by a policeman and made to show his ID card. The man reading from Stalin is also asked for his ID; the hero is asked at one point, "Why are the police always after you?"; Kata is, or was, a policewoman; and policemen, often with dogs, appear throughout the film, especially towards the end.

Though the main outline of the plot is fairly clear, the details are often deliberately obscure and contradictory. After helping the victim of the beating at the opening of the film, Kaffka, who carries a video camera through much of the action, films some of the café conversation nostalgically recalling the glory days of Stalinism, then goes to a party where a woman introduces him as her "friend and lover." This woman then gets into an ugly argument where she displays blatant anti-Semitism before apologising for this. Kaffka goes to look for another woman, Marta, and finds her dead on the kitchen floor with a dagger beside her and a large poster of himself on the wall. He takes the poster and leaves the apartment.

He then turns up at Kata's apartment carrying a bunch of flowers. TV images show her being interviewed as to why she joined the police. The romantic mood is broken when she accuses him of having an affair with another woman, Juli, and shows him a video image of the two of them together. They quarrel as he denies this affair and he then talks about Marta's death, denying that he had killed her. She says that "all writers and artists lie" (he is apparently a poet) but the romantic setting returns as they drink champagne and dance. Kata then says that she killed Marta and has framed him for the crime, mentioning circumstantial evidence such as the poster. They start to make love, after which she goes to take a shower while he talks about the false accusations made against her grandfather in the 1950s. She comes out of the shower and threatens him with a gun, saying that she loves him; but then shoots herself. He screams and picks up her body (or perhaps just her empty robe), then leaves, taking his camera with him.

The scene then switches to a room filled with TV monitors, on most of which Juli is being interviewed about the 1950s. Kaffka enters another room, also filled with TV monitors, picking up the poster as he goes. On one of the screens a long panning shot takes in some of the men at the party earlier, including Kaffka himself. An abrupt cut shows him accusing another man of killing Marta; the man replies that he (Kaffka) will be the next to die. In a brief outdoors scene in the courtyard where the film had opened, the newcomer, sitting in a Volkswagen, repeats his threat, saying that Kaffa will "come to a bad end" because he can't accept the world as it is.

He is then seen in Juli's apartment, in a room dominated by huge bank of TV monitors showing her interview; he turns these off with a wave of his hand. Another monitor repeats the earlier shot of Kaffa and other men at the party. Juli and he start to talk about astrology, the end of the world and extreme and unprecedented weather conditions—a theme that is taken up by a speaker on one of the televisions. They embrace and drink champagne and the scene begins to resemble the earlier one with Kata, especially when she starts to take a shower and he, half-naked, waits outside the glass door.

Suddenly a masked man bursts into the room and shoots him; she screams loudly as she covers his body, again recalling Kata's death. She is then seen leaving the building and running towards the Volkswagen, where she finds his body. She goes to a phone booth and, while she is phoning for an ambulance, one arrives with unnatural speed and the body (which may now not be his) is removed.

She is then shown being sedated, in a room where TV monitors continue the discussion of extreme and unpredictable weather changes—"we have reached the limits of human knowledge." She gives a friend of Kaffka's, seen earlier, the cassette showing scenes from the party, but, as the camera scans the men present once more, Kaffka's image has disappeared. It is at this point that she first gives his name—"Joseph Kaffka."

Returning to the courtyard, now filled with police cars, Juli is comforted by a policeman as she says she is afraid to go inside the house. Meanwhile horsemen seen earlier, dressed in showjumping costume, circle the scene, as do the police cars. When Juli is next seen, her house is no longer there and the Volkswagen is now a burnt-out wreck. The man who had threatened Kaffka says he plans to build on this spot and, when she says she recognises him, he denies this. She gets into a police car, as the camera circles this and the constant rain continues. She says again that his name was Joseph Kaffka and gives his address and ID number. The police check this and say that there is no record of him having existed. When she disputes this, she is told that their computer can't prove that Christ had ever existed either.

The police cars and motor cycles enter a large streetcar garage; she gets out and kneels beside one of the tramlines. The horsemen ride past and guitar music is heard as the wind blows dust over her.

The end of privacy
Talking in interview during the production of the film, Gyula Hernádi, who adapted the script from one of his short stories, stated that "in the film, it is not the story that is of interest, but its presentation, its form." [3] Beginning relatively realistically, though with some obscure and ambiguous incidents, the film moves towards a resolution that cannot be explained in rational terms. Did Kaffka ever exist or (like out-of-favour Soviet politicians) has his image, and identity, simply been erased from the historical record? Is he a murderer or someone who is framed for other people's crimes? Is the contemporary world capable of being rationally understood or explained? How relevant is a commonplace murder mystery when (as the scientists on TV warn) the world may be heading blindly towards imminent catastrophe?

The formal structure within which these questions are explored is dominated by the ubiquitous TV and video images that proliferate everywhere—indoors and outdoors, in private and in public spaces— apparently recording (and perhaps controlling) every aspect of the characters' lives—in chilling anticipation of the recently stated aim of security services in the US, Britain and elsewhere to record every phone call or e-mail message sent by their citizens.

As in Szörnyek évadja, but to a far greater extent, the monitors rarely simply record the action taking place, but provide alternative viewpoints, repeat scenes or show incidents from both past and, possibly, future. Often the cinematic image and the video image contained within it blend seamlessly so that characters move smoothly from one level of "reality" to another without a break and the dreamlike effect of several scenes is accentuated by quietly atmospheric music and by the strange time disjunctions and apparent impossibilities, especially towards the end (Juli leaves Kaffka's body in her house, then finds it in the intact Volkswagen; in the same scene the house disappears and the car becomes a wreck).

The overall effect is to suggest that privacy is no longer possible; official surveillance is everywhere and, on a metaphysical level, even visual evidence of our existence and identity can easily be erased. Even the title of the film contains a logical impossibility: as Jancsó explained in the interview already quoted: "According to the church, Jesus Christ could not have a horoscope, because then the position of the stars would have determined his fate, and not God's will."