Love (Makk)

Directed by Karoly Makk in 1971, Love is a Hunagarian film that blew me away when I saw it last night - I want to write about how it deals with truth and lies, fiction and reality:

As the film begins, a camera tracks an old and frail lady confined to her house. In long, drawn-out shots she wakes up and spends her time sitting around doing nothing much. Occasionally she gets up and walks a few steps, taking a look out of the window. As time creeps along and the woman nears death she becomes restricted to her bed. But her life isn't quite as static as it may appear. Interspersed throughout this inactivity are images and sounds that register for snatches of a second, from the ordinary (a clock ticking, a piece of fruit on a table, rain hammering on cobblestones) to the extraordinary (six men riding on horseback through woodlands). The viewer is left to infer that these fragments are being conjured from inside the woman’s head, images remembered and dreamt.

Throughout the film the viewer is placed in a position that alters between the external and internal, the real and imagined. As the camera observes the woman from afar the sense of confinement and physical stillness is heightened, trapped behind windows and laying dormant in bed. When this inactivity is punctured by the images she internally conjures we see a woman brought magically to life, her mind exploding onto the screen. The camera flits seamlessly between making us look at her and through her, so that these divides between inner and outer, fiction and reality eventually break down, and with the help of the beautifully paced editing the viewer becomes completely attuned to the rhythm’s of the woman’s life.

The woman is waiting for the return of her son Janos. She is visited regularly by her housekeeper and her daughter-in-law Luca, both of whom look after her. Much of the film’s focus is centred on Luca’s day to day life, trying to get by as she loses her job and her friends desert her. Luca leads her mother-in-law to believe that the reason for Janos’ absence is because he’s a successful filmmaker currently shooting in America, awaiting the premiere of his new film before he can return. One of the many emotional knockouts in Love is based around a letter written by Janos that she receives – our eyes become those of the old lady as we look through a magnifying glass with her as she reads the letter, until suddenly images start to take the place of the words she’s reading, images that rhyme with those we’re hearing, pictures of children, America, and picture-houses start flashing before our eyes. The film stuns in its power to visualise the workings of memory, of the mind. We hear her reading the letter out loud while simultaneously being able to discern her muttering and mumbling the same words in the background. In this sequence the film succeeds in bringing to life the very act of her reading the letter inside her own head – it’s an astonishing moment that displays the beauty and sadness of this woman forced to live out life in the mind.

What gives these scenes extra heft is that it transpires this life she is living out internally is itself a fiction. The letter has been written by Luca to disguise Janos’ true fate. Although details aren’t explicit, it becomes clear that Janos is neither a filmmaker nor outside of Hungary. He is a political prisoner who is described as a “traitor and a conspirator” by the guards that eventually release him. “Why did he have to meddle in politics?” asks Luca’s mother. It’s clear that the film is referring to the events surrounding the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. However, what’s explicit in the film is still vague enough that the story could apply to places throughout the world. The scenes of officialdom and the dialogue regarding Janos’ status as a traitor have a universal reach.

The film tackles not only the fictions we create in our own minds, but also those we create for others. One of its major triumphs is that the moral ambiguities surrounding Luca’s decisions to lie to her mother-in-law aren’t interrogated. The viewer is directed isn’t directed towards conclusions but are left to find their own way. Luca conceals her poverty by replacing old flowers she has given to her mother-in-law in the past and passing them off as new. A critical point occurs during a desperately long shot of the mother that tightens in on her face as she begins to cry out for Janos, cries which force Luca into emotionally manipulating her, threatening that she’ll ask Janos to halt work on his film and cable him to come home.

Love makes me think of Joan Didion’s line “we tell ourselves stories in order to live”. It's a film that deals head on with the notion of living through the stories we tell and it brings up some fascinating questions about whether it’s acceptable to lie to those we love if it can keep their mind exploding.