Taxidermia
Directed by György Pálfi
based on short stories of Lajos Parti Nagy
FilmLot interview with György Pálfi
FL: You mentioned that your screenplay is based on stories by Lajos Parti Nagy. What was it about those stories that lead you to write Taxidermia?
GP: When I read Lajos Parti Nagy’s novels something clicked with those short stories and I said this is the kind of film I want to make. He thinks the same way I do, he sees the world in the same way as I do – which is a weird mix of realism and something mysterious and magical… it’s a strange mix of both.
[...]
FL: We’ve described the film as having some visually disturbing moments, but it’s shot so beautifully that it’s hard to look away!
GP: I’m glad to hear you say this. We always wanted to have an outsiders kind of [view]… We used a lot of long crane shots to keep some distance from what was actually happening. But the story itself was told in a very personal way, with a lot of interior storytelling and looking in to the character. So these two oppose each other, the nature of the narrative and the nature of the cinematography. They’re two sort of different points of view.
FL: Were you surprised how shocking some of the scenes are when you saw the first edit?
GP: Yes it did have a big affect on me, but it wasn’t a surprise so much, because we knew that this was what we wanted. It was more a question of how we could use these disturbing shots in the film. So we decided, actually in the editing room, that every shot which served the purpose of telling the story would remain in the film, whether it was disturbing, or disgusting or not. [Laughs] And everything that didn’t serve the purpose of telling the story we just cut – which usually weren’t the disturbing, disgusting scenes.
(source/s: thelist.co.uk; http://www.taxidermia.hu/rendezoien.htm)
"I would like to create a lasting, personal-authorial film, the story of a man tortured by eternal dilemmas, not actual ones. Past exists only in memories. It becomes a story only in Lajos Balathony's interpretation. And why cannot it be true? Why could not the world be like this? Why cannot the fertile human imagination toy with the facts of history, personal fates, details of lifestyles? Maybe this is the common border of things really happened and truth." - Palfi
