THE OUTPOST
A film review by James Berardinelli
Copyright 1996 James Berardinelli
RATING (0 TO 10): 4.0 Alternative Scale: ** out of ****
Hungary/Romania, 1994 Running Length: 1:25 MPAA Classification: No MPAA Rating (Nudity) Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Shown at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, 5/8/96, 5/10/96
Cast: Mari Nagy, Joszef Szarvas, Geza Toth, Alexandru Bindea, Stefan Silenau, Marcu Marcel Director: Peter Gothar Producers: Sandor Simo, sandor Szongi Screenplay: Peter Gothar based on a short story by Adam Bodor Cinematography: Vivi Dragan Vasile Music: Gyorgy Selmeczy and Gyorgy Orban In Hungarian with subtitles
THE OUTPOST is what might result if Kafka wrote about the waning years of Socialism in Eastern Europe. The film, which reflects what happens when people unquestioningly accept the dictates of their rulers, is obscure, bizarre, and ultimately dissatisfying. THE OUTPOST functions as an extended allegory that could easily have been shortened to about half of its final running length. Some viewers may appreciate this opaque, grim depiction of the consequences of totalitarianism, but I'm not among them.
THE OUTPOST has a minimalist story that takes place in an unnamed Eastern European country during the 1980s. A woman, Gizella Weiss (Mari Nagy), has shown enough initiative and inventiveness to earn a promotion to "a new sector". Led by one increasingly less communicative guide after another, Gizella travels by train, bus, railroad cart, horse-drawn wagon, and on foot to reach the outpost. When she arrives, more than two-thirds of the way through the movie, she discovers that the place is a run-down shack inhabited by weasels and an unfriendly man who eats one meal a day and refuses to light fires. When her reluctant companion finally confides to her the reason why she's there, his words are cryptic: "You were sent here to think about why you were sent here."
THE OUTPOST is a very strange film, using stark lighting, bland characters (even Gizella is strictly one-dimensional), and repeated dialogue (men at various stopping points say virtually the same things to Gizella) to drive home its message. The problem is, eighty-five minutes is a long time to sit through such a stagnant movie. There characters are so distant and their actions so meaningless that it doesn't take long for THE OUTPOST's pervasive apathy to reach the audience. We just don't care. Newcomer Mari Nagy is very good as Gizella, and Peter Gothar's fifth feature certainly gets the point across, but THE OUTPOST could have benefited from more substance and a few genuine characters amidst all the self-conscious weirdness.
- James Berardinelli e-mail: berardin@bc.cybernex.net web: http://www.cybernex.net/~berardin
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews