ThiefHott Too much of everything

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

andreeeei I borrowed the DVD from a local store, being sure that this is going to be a good movie. I read good reviews of it. Now I'm quite disappointed after seeing it. The movie is good enough until the scene where the woman is telling her rape experience finishes. The story of the rape is the best part. As the camera focused on the characters' faces, Katalin tells her horrific story, disconnected from the suffering that we would expect. That gives the character a lot of power. She is in a position of control, she overcame the bad experience and her main weapon is the truth, because the truth will really ruin the precious relationship of Katalin's aggressor with his wife. The story of the rape is told in such intimate detail, that you may feel various emotions, like empathy, justice being done, concern for any of the characters, each of them may be in a dangerous position. The situation is very much like one from Sadoveanu's novel "Baltagul". After this wonderful artistic moment, the rest of the movie is full of broken links. The man's regret for what he has done is very unrealistic, not that this might not happen in real life, but his state is not supported by the play and the character's story. Then, the suffering for the loss of his wife is too short. The wife, a devoted Christian, commits suicide (that's possible, but not very probable) without many explanations given to us. The man suffers too little after that because he is quite preoccupied with his relation with Katalin and her son. Many other disharmonious details disconnected me from the movie. I also have some personal regrets, that the Romanians in the movie are all mean characters. There's no obvious reason in a movie where 99 percent of the time you have Hungarian language speaking, only three short but significant dialogues are in Romanian. In one of them we have the girls eating sunflower seeds that are not helping the strangers in need without judging or mocking them. Eating sunflowers in public in Romania is associated with low class, specially because it's a Balkan habit mostly associated with gypsies. Speaking of gypsies, I can not get over the idea that the first victim of Katalin is associated with Gypsies and undoubtedly this is part of the construction of an evil character. The other two scenes with Romanians are the ones involving the vengeful criminals, one of them showing a twisted faith in God. Anyway, it could have been a good movie, but amateurish errors and a bit of xenophobia (I suppose) ruined it for me. I may keep in mind as good parts: landscapes, music and the boat scene.

Sindre Kaspersen English screenwriter, producer and director Peter Strickland's feature film debut which he wrote and co-produced, premiered In competition at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival in 2009, was shot on location in East Transylvania, Romania and is a Romania-UK-Hungary co- production which was produced by Hungarian producers Tudor Giurgiu and Oana Giurgiu. It tells the story about a Catholic woman named Katalin Varga who lives with her husband named Zsigmond and their 11-year-old son named Orbán in a rustic village called Visrek in Romania. Katalin has been keeping a secret from Zsigmond and Orbán for many years, but one day she learns that the secret has been revealed by the only person she told it to. Katalin is almost immediately banished by her spouse who feels betrayed, and with no one else to turn to Katalin sets out on a horse wagon with her son towards a place she left eleven years ago to locate Orbán's real father. Distinctly and commandingly directed by European filmmaker Peter Strickland, this quietly paced fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints though mostly from the protagonist's point of view, draws a foreboding and increasingly dramatic portrayal of a Hungarian gypsy's voyage towards realizing her bloodlust which she has been dreaming of for the last decade with her child whom she has lied to by telling him that the reason why they have left his father is because his grandmother is severely ill. While notable for it's distinctly atmospheric and naturalistic milieu depictions, distinct cinematography by cinematographer Márk Györi, costume design and versatile and brilliant use of sound, this character-driven and narrative-driven story about redemption, vengeance, consequences and judgment where the animating landscapes and harmonic use of colors contrasts the apocalyptic aura and a mother whom has been scorned for life by an horrific incident only she suffered and still is suffering from prays to her saints for the strength to carry out an unforgivable act, a husband does not forgive, a Romanian criminal named Antal Borlán asks to be forgiven and a child is getting closer to the truth regarding his origins, depicts two internal and merging studies of character and contains a timely score by composers Steven Stapleton and Geoff Cox.This ethereal, wickedly humorous and mythical road-movie and psychological drama from the late 2000s which is set in villages in Transylvania, Romania and where a man who lives with his wife named Etelka one day meets two strangers, is impelled and reinforced by it's fragmented narrative structure, substantial character development, rhythmic continuity, apparently joyful characters, austere and synoptic dialog, incisive religious undertones, incorporation of genres, comment by Katalin Varga : "I asked the fawn, whose sins have I just died for? He didn't answer and just shed a tear for me." and the poignant acting performances by Hungarian actress Hilda Péter in her debut feature film role and Romanian actor Tibor Pàlffy. A masterfully atmospheric, cinematographic and expressionistic directorial debut which gained, among other awards, the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the 59th Berlin Film Festival in 2009.

bpx69 Just some tidbits: In an after screening q&a session the author said he wanted to originally cast the movie in Albania, where it would IMO be a good fit with the patriarch governed extended families being the dominant societal organisational form and blood line revenge a.k.a. besa still alive in rural parts of Albania and Kosovo.But that region in the times of shooting of the film was not a particularly safe place for an itinerant cinematographer, so Hungary and Romania were chosen instead. This being perhaps fortunate for an intimate story of the film, it would be IMO hard to avoid a different political context, including war atrocities and mass rapings taking place in Kosovo at the time of shooting.Still the Katalin's impulse, and a quick decision to search for her rapist, would be clearer in rural Albania, as within the gossip run partially traditional and partially already modern Romanian village. We are therefore left to our own devices to figure out her motivation during the course of the movie, where the images of dark woods and music leading us to expect some Dracula offspring or something equally sinister to jump out any minute now, do not exactly help us there.The cinematography is really beautiful, the director commenting that it's not that difficult to be director of photography in Transylvania, where you have so many interesting things and locations to point your camera to. So many decisions about locations were made on the spot without much planning.The movie was envisioned, shot and brought to a rough cut on a 16mm film using a director's small inheritance of 30.000 Euro. He attributes his finding a producer to finance the blow-up to 35mm to pure luck, but without this luck probably no-one would ever see this very beautiful movie. At the point of my writing the distribution contracts and all the awards brought him about a third of this investment back.I have to mention the scene where Katalin tells the story of her being raped to her rapist and his wife, as something, that will remain in my memory for some time. Hilda Peter in the role of Katalin Varga is great. Much of the film's appeal is due to her and also other actor's performance.

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx Peter Strickland's debut movie Katalin Varga reminds me very much of another recent British film, Asif Kapadia's 2007 effort Far North, which is also a folk horror story about an outcast and her child. Stickland uses the dank forest of Romania instead of the perilous ice flows of the north, but the movies are birds of a feather, low budget movies intended to tap primal energies.Children run away from Katalin Varga, a darkly pretty woman with live-wire eyes, who's altogether too spirited to remain unmolested in the time-capsuled world with which the movie presents te viewer. Folk have mobile phones, but Katalin still travels by horse-drawn cart, and men still make hay in the fields with pitchforks. Gossip in Katalin's village is poisonous enough to make Clouzot's vision in Le Corbeau appear positively made of marshmallow. Following the repurcussions of gossip regarding Katalin's past, she travels with her child into an apparently infrastructure-less hinterland on a dark mission, like black lightning.It's no surprise to find, following shot after shot of foreboding nature scenes, that this is a tragedy, in a cul-de-sac structure similar to Monte Hellman's brilliant 1965 movie Ride in the Whirlwind.It's a brutal movie, in structure rather than in screen violence, which there is remarkably little of, and which is generally obscured in incoherence when it occurs. It's almost senseless and left me with a directionless primitive anger.