MovieChat Forums > Dealer (2004) Discussion > Boring and political

Boring and political


You might like Fliegauf's "Dealer" maybe if you haven't seen his earlier films. They are all clones, of which "Dealer" is at least the 4th of a kind, the others being "Is there life before death?", "Talking Heads" and "Rengeteg". His films use the same schema: extremely long close-ups of monologues. You can call this a "personal style", but it is also a trade-off for creativity and experimenting.

The reason why "Dealer" has been so successful in Hungary and elsewhere is probably because the issue of drugs is overpoliticised and it has been de facto taboo. In the last decade or so there have been very few Hungarian films on this topic, all of them were depicting drugs (undifferentiatedly) as the ultimate evil. "Dealer" certainly has a different approach, because it makes you mostly laugh at, and/or - to a lesser extent - feel sorry for drug users, whereas the other movies were intended mostly to make you hate drugs (and/or - to a lesser extent - also feel sorry for drug users). So this movie suits for both pro-drug and anti-drug people, because of not making any clear statements about the issue. It is yet to be seen whether Fliegauf or any other Hungarian director could make an intelligent and socially significant impact on the issue of drugs in Hungary.

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oh yeah, and scorcese invents himself in every other movie, i guess.
i think dealer is the perfect movie in it's own genre of slowified movies, and not because it's about drugs. it really could be about anything. i put it into a category with elephant by gus van sant and last year in marienbad by resnais. it is the obvious love for moving pictures, sound, creating a mood, using a certain technique and the -faces- of the actors that elevates it from the masses of movies. the director must have been just a little bit in love with the main actor; his reactions were so minimalist and yet so self-explanatory and all this on display in those huge close ups. maybe you cannot film or photograph someone beautifully without feeling something for them, at least during the process.

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