MovieChat Forums > Taxidermia (2006) Discussion > What's it really about?

What's it really about?

posted 17 years ago by Lillam
19 replies | jump to latest

Just saw Taxidermia and although impressed with cinematography and great use of special effects + CGI I was ultimately left unmoved by this film. Yes it bangs on about the profane parts of life: sex, killing, eating, in a crude and frankly stomach churning way (the eating bits were too much for me)- but so what?

THis movie strikes me as being all style over content - or at least the content is little more than a crude look at the profanity of life, or a reduction of life to its most profane elements.

Whats more it tends to snear at the stupid, the fat and the old - I get the impression that the director is a middle class Hungarian who finds "common" people disgusting, and no doubt puts himself in a league above "them". As for the representation of women... forget it - the worst kind of macho filmmaking.

Is there anything deep about this film what so ever?

[–] crappydoo 17 years ago

You have a point there. Although I'm not too sure if I agree with your inference that the director looks down up on people. To the contrary I did not feel repelled or disgusted with the obese and odd characters depicted. They were projected humanely and I did empathise with them.

I watched it last night and yeah it has spectacular effects and did not make me queasy for some reason, for which it should receive kudos.

However, I just couldn't see the point. The director may as well have made a surrealistic film with a series of random vignettes a la Bunuel because then it would make sense that the movie is not about anything other than a visual experience. By giving it a plot (or a non-plot for that matter), the director has effectively diluted his artistic vision.

A good comparison can be made with Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, which plays out as a visual experience (and is just as quease inducing) but you realise what it was about when the movie was over. Taxidermia had me lost.

But who knows, perhaps the director felt that a story would attract a bigger audience.

[–] hugopresser 17 years ago

I just saw this at the Brisbane international film festival and thought it was great. Mildly genius even. The guy who announced it compared it to Tarkovsky's 'Zerkalo' (Mirror) with some other film that I don't remember, which I thought was true. Although I would rather have found that out myself than some guy telling the audience about it before it had begun.

I haven't had much time to reflect on it, but the message I got out of it was that the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree. Freaks breed freaks. It was inspiring to see a no holds barred film with a point, like reading Marquis De Sade or something - it's so extreme that it makes the thoughts floating around in my head seem like playtime. The audience had a bit of trouble with it, the humor was so dark that in the funniest parts only about 3 or 4 people cracked up.

If you're looking for other awesome new movies check out Tzameti (13) and another good one is Parents by Ragnar Bragason.

[–] becktold5 15 years ago

crappydoo:
you say
"the director has effectively diluted his artistic vision."

really? um...are you the director? do you know the director? how do you know that he diluted his artistic vision?

truth is, none of us know what it's really about, what THE DIRECTOR intended to do with this movie. why can't a dang movie just be a dang movie? why does it have to be about all these things that people argue about?

[–] lyndsay_lane 13 years ago

I agree with you. These were pretty "disgusting" characters, but the director really humanized them. For this movie to have depth and meaning, it was necessary for the audience to care about the characters, no matter how disturbing or gross they were, and I think the film makers achieved that. And with this lot, it was no easy task! :-)

[–] InUrFridge 16 years ago

I don't really understand how you can say that this film was "the worst kind of macho filmmaking"

What makes you think that?

The way I see it, although there were females in it, there were no female characters. So you cannot say that the film was sexist any more than you can say that it was anti-chicken.

Ok, so basically all you saw the women doing was having sex but thats just because to make a film about 3 generations you need to include the creation of the next generation. So perhaps this film depicts women as simply objects for making babies.

But this a film about 3 men and what they do to themselves.

If you want a film about women go and watch Sex and the City when it comes out. I've never even seen the TV programme but I imagine that the men don't get very fleshed out roles. Alternatively you could watch the Kinder Bueno advert where, in short, three women look at a man's arse, giggle, then the slogan "A little bit of what you fancy" comes up.

[–] irissvoboda 16 years ago

i admit that it was gross, but i did see a message in it. for me it was showing how the self-preservation instinct translates into an overwhelming desire for an heir. the first guy's unhappiness stemmed from his inability to produce a son. the second guy's main motivation was getting the speed-eating woman, in order to produce a speed-eating son so he could carry on living through him. this is shown at the end when he's old and trying to get his cats to be speed-eaters like him, because his son rejected that lifestyle. the third guy flirts unsuccessfully with the checkout woman, before concluding that he will never get a son. he therefore decides to preserve himself literally. however, the fact that his preserved corpse is maimed emphasises the fact that none of the sons represented their fathers in the way they wanted, and therefore none of the fathers were truly allowed to carry on living after their own death. i guess the point is that we die and are forgotten, and trying to preseve ourselves in any way (also shown through the embryo keyring) is futile!

[–] timlin-4 16 years ago

Excellent post spyd_a. I didn't really like this film, but after reading your interpretation, I think it might be one of the best films ever made!? Well, I guess I don't like reality either.

[–] bluespinach 15 years ago

I finally saw Taxidermia last nightafter many weeks of waiting for my copy to arrive. I thought it was a great movie, but one that I wouldn't watch again for at least a few months until I can convince someone else to watch it with me so I could at least have some discussion about it. I've found there are many disadvantages to watching such movies alone. Thanks spyd_a for some really great insight, you've inspired me to watch the movie again alot sooner.

[–] omniron 15 years ago

I agree with spyd a. but i also think there is also a statement there about the futility of culture, art and humanity in general. all the motivations and actions in this film are animalistic, suggesting that the humans in it are actualy vile animals, though they mask it brutaly (the father removing the tail of the baby). I thought that the director was pointing out the fact that we can't escape our primitive nature. The first generation with war, the second with futile competitiveness, and the third with grotesque art.
I suspect there is also a political comment there.

[–] Czris 15 years ago

The film seems to plumb our disgust at the human body and its functions, amongst other things. The final scenes especially, in the transition from organic to machinic life sustenance, but also, the excision of the pigs tail that resulted from *beep* on a pig - combined disgust and desire for the animalistic/natural?

>>I suspect there is also a political comment there.

I agree. For one, the lockjaw experienced by Kalvan (I think that was his name) in the speed-eating competition, in which he is beating the Soviet contender despite being told he can only come second, could be construed as representative of the complicity of the oppressed in their oppression. As in, Kalvan has so internalised his inferiority to the Soviets that his physical being rejects the possibility of beating them.

The final Hungarian/English monologue suggests that the West is just as complicit as Soviet Russia in this sense - the use of the English language, combined with the ridiculously sophisticated/wealthy crowd and the suggestion that 'the machine that kept him alive also killed him' could very easily be taken as an allegory for Western capitalism's hegemony and absorption of all other political/economic/cultural entities.

I saw it for the first time last night (with my Hungarian flatmate, no less!), so it's all pretty fresh, but I will definitely watch it again - a great movie, and incredibly provocative.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] quirkyrecords 15 years ago

its true that there is no clear intent to want a son.

however, i personally feel that its the primitive desires that are important here. The first character just wants to have sex. pure and simple, its all he thinks about. but his sexual desires are natures way of continuing a species. to us we think about the pleasure of sex, but the pleasure is there to encourage us to procreate and therefore have offspring.

so although he doesnt perhaps conciously want a child, nature wants him to. he wants to have sex, which brings life. we eat, sleep, procreate and die. that is a very reductionist way of looking at life but that is how animals live.

so he may not want sex for a child, his desire to have sex comes from a primitive insentive to have a child.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3136037

[–] irissvoboda 14 years ago

well wanting to get laid (as the first did) or get a girlfriend (as the second and third did) are clearly related to procreation. the purpose of the sex drive is reproduction. i'd say the desire to have sex, procreate, or preserve yourself are all equivalent and interchangeable. while such a biological interpretation of the human condition may not be to everyone's tastes, such a view seems to me to be inherent in taxidermia. sexual frustration, thwarted desire for an heir, and fear of mortality are all indicative of an organism's instinctive need to preserve its genes. yet while the genes can be preserved, the individual itself cannot be, which none of the men of taxidermia realise.

[–] mintonmedia 15 years ago

Three generations of men, each obsessed with a form of stuffing: first sex, then food, and finally the title form, each abberration a way facing/denying natural beauty. Immorality meets immortality, seen through parodies of the sequential lifestyles and politics of Nationalist, Communist and Westernized Hungarian society.

Fascinating, perhaps even brilliant...but very, very, very hard to watch. Nuff said?

We don't get that here. People ski topless smoking dope, so irony's not a high priority.

[–] The_Man_The_Myth 13 years ago

And the penny drops..."Three generations of men, each obsessed with a form of stuffing: first sex, then food, and finally the title form...". Good work.

"People like Coldplay and voting for the Nazis - you can't trust people."

[–] NEU-NEU 15 years ago

I think this movie is about the fascination of the flesh. It can be shown in many and various ways like the 3 different chapters do.

At first, we are shown the primitive desire and lust for raw flesh through Morosgoványi, the way he can't help but spy on the girls, performing tricks such as trying to kiss or swallow the flame of his candle, or "mating" with the fat woman over the bathtub filled with meat, almost mixing the two to a point it makes you wonder if he is really doing a woman.. or just a big pile of meat.

Next we are shown another way with Kálmán, who performs at these weird eating competitions where fat peoples and eating machines are praised by all, the same way Japanese sumo wrestlers would be considered like gods. They push back the limits of their body capacity or performances. Their flesh is their reason to be. It's what they live for, to a point they feel ashamed for their skinny son, with the father turning over his cats to raise them outrageously fat for his own pride's sake.

Then we are shown another one with Lajosh and the world of taxidermy, the fascination of preserving corpses as beautiful and realistic as when they were alive. It goes through all the ranges, from small pets to huge gorillas, with the creepiest minds ordering stuffed foetus or to the extremity of self-taxidermy.

But what scared me the most in this movie... wasn't the ugly scenes of it, the vomit, the monstrously large father, the self-stuffing, no. It was the very last scene when we are shown a group of people, all of them being very beautiful... i mean, artificially beautiful, a symmetric and very unnatural beauty. These "beautiful" people all dressed in white, all being curious about this morbid ritual of beauty preservation. It almost seemed like a totalitarian world to me, or something close to a sect where only the aestheticism is praised, where some rules are being applied on what "Beauty" is and on what should be considered beautiful by an entire society.. It's not hard to imagine how the "average" or "ugly" people would be considered in that kind of society with these very specific definitions of beauty (It instantly reminded me "Brave New World"). This is now the kind of fascination they have about the flesh: being pure, young and perfectly shaped... I guess you will all recall yourself one man who also had this exact same vision about his people, who led an entire nation and killed millions because they weren't "pure" enough to his eyes.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] Der_Schnibbler 11 years ago

As for the representation of women... forget it - the worst kind of macho filmmaking.

You're obviously a sheltered little girl who's taken one too many feminazi liberal arts courses if you saw anything remotely "macho" in this film, dear. Macho would be telling you to take the twist out of your panties, zip your lips shut, and stop complaining about imaginary PC crapola. You poor, gullible thing.

--
"Den Gleichen Gleiches, den Ungleichen Ungleiches."

[–] 11 years ago

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