Jose here. Kornél Mundruczó’s White God opens with one of the most memorable scenes in recent films, as we see a the desolate streets of Budapest in the aftermath of a canine uprising which has forced all the citizens to stay inside their homes. All except one, a little girl (Zsófia Psotta) trying to find her beloved dog, who unbeknownst to her, is actually the leader of this revolution. While the film has been compared to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, White God in fact has more in common with two 1960s classics: Spartacus and The Birds, which makes sense considering that Mundruczó has made a career out of paying homage to classic Hollywood films, while injecting them with darker political undertones.
The film was a sensation at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and was Hungary’s official submission for the Academy Awards; it could also very well become Mundruczó’s international breakthrough. On the eve of the film’s Stateside premiere I talked to the filmmaker about his career so far, the struggles of working under extreme circumstances and his love for opera.
JOSE: I thought the film was entertaining in a conventional thriller sense, but it was also such a powerful allegory for the rise of right-wing racism in Europe. How were you able to achieve a balance between the two?
KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ: It was really personal, when I started to work on this movie I was really touched by the situation of the dogs inside Budapest. I went to a dog pound, for different reasons, not as a filmmaker, and I was so touched. Sometimes something just steps on your soul, and that’s what this felt like, I felt such a shame, I was in shock, I was part of a system that was supporting this. I wanted to talk about it and I believe that democracy is talking about things, so I decided I wanted to make a movie about one dog in Budapest. When we were developing the script, it was obvious that this was also a great allegory for what is the illness of our society. But this wasn’t something premeditated, I never thought “I want to shoot a metaphor”, I just wanted to tell this story.
Has there been a difference in how the film is received in countries like Spain and Greece which have seen powerful social uprisings in recent years?
Totally huge difference, I have no clue how it will be received in the US, but I feel that there are Eastern souls and Western souls, in France for example, they identified with the major society, but when people saw the movie in Mexico they felt “we are the dogs”. In Eastern Europe, we also felt we were the dogs. We have also had a lot of success in Turkey, which is very curious, since I had no connections with this country at all, but we’ve had lots of comments from there.
Would you say that this is your most “Hungarian” film? Looking back at your other works, this is the one where you show the most landmarks, the one with the strongest social message and you even use Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody”.
That’s right, I think this is my most Hungarian movie because of my attitude when I made it. I felt shame and I was angry with my society, I wanted to tell everyone that I had a problem with this. In Cannes I realized that the movie worked as a universal story and had something to say everywhere we showed it, maybe not the same thing, but it had a message to tell. I was quite surprised, as a filmmaker it was enough for me to show it in Hungary, so it’s really meaningful to realize how close the movie makes audiences feel all over the world.
There’s a scene in the film that takes place inside a concert hall, and you direct it in complete crescendo, as if it was an opera. This obviously made me think of your musical Johanna, because more than a horror movie, I think of White God as an operatic tale. Can you talk about how you used music to highlight the emotions in these two films?
Yeah definitely. I am an opera fan, when I made Johanna I wanted to show that you can make a movie using contemporary opera, and in White God we use the “Hungarian Rhapsody”, but also I’m an opera person, so I keep thinking about how to tell my stories using big images, which is close to opera thinking. Sometimes I also direct operas onstage, opera is really contemporary because it combines theatre, music, literature, poems. I think opera is becoming more and more popular in Europe, I’ve worked in Hungary and Belgium and young people are coming to operas more and more, it’s not just for bourgeoisie or old people.
Ironically, opera seems to be dying in New York City at least, with fewer companies each year. Do you think movies can affect the way people think of opera?
I think it should come from inside, I don’t want to protest or make messages, I like to tell stories using this logic, opera opens something in your soul.
Kornél Mundruczó at the Magnolia Pictures HQ in NYC. Credit: Jose Solis
You grew up in a small town where there was a small arthouse and a bigger theater where you saw things like The Terminator, which means you grew up loving both the mainstream and the highbrow. If we think of Johanna as a musical, Delta as a melodrama, Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project as a monster movie and White God as a thriller, we could say your mission is to subvert Hollywood genres, right? Because as much as White God made me think of The Birds, I actually was rooting for the dogs.
That’s it yeah, of course in White God there’s a lot of inspiration from films like Jurassic Park, but in our case the unknown is what carries the moral, which is very contradictory and paradoxical. You understand much more that if you don’t give rights to the animals, they’ll get angry and seek moral retribution. I liked this contradiction. I grew up in a small town with a small movie theater and a large city theater that had just started playing American movies, we were the generation that got to watch these movies first, so both the art movies and the commercial ones got mixed up in my head. But I think the soul is big enough to have places for everything (laughs), I like Blade Runner as much as Robert Bresson or Au Hasard Balthazar. I like opera but I also like musicals, they might not be high art, but they touch you. I believe the “pure genre” thing is over anyway, the world we’re living in Eastern Europe has changed, a combined genre movie makes more sense in our world, there are no more pure answers.
You’ve mentioned the soul a few times, and without getting into a spiritual discussion, I wanted to ask about the role of fate in your films, your characters in Johanna, Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project and White God seem unable to escape their fate, with characters’ lives being ruled by their creators.
It’s a difficult question, of course I also recognize those elements you mention, I like classical stories and Greek dramas, not to make onstage, but the themes and plots are really good. They always present us with a moral question: who is the creator? Of course the boy in Frankenstein is close to Hagen from White God, without a question, but this is really a classical structure. How I use these elements is tricky but I always have a classical base.
It also seems like you like putting yourself in very extreme situations when making your movies, in Delta you have cameras on boats, in Johanna you have all these impressive tracking shots, and well the work with the dogs in White God is remarkable. Do you like putting yourself through technical hell to make your movies?
(Laughs) Yes! I like watching movies like this, the story may be simple but I like movies that seem unique. Lots of people have told me White God is very different, in one way yes, since things are changing around me, I choose to represent the new Eastern Europe using a new cinematic language, but there are lots of connections in between my movies. This is me, let’s say this is my family. Now I can work with dogs, which I might never do again (laughs), in Delta I shot in the water all the time, for what? Who knows? I’m not a very practical person.
How did you find Zsófia Psotta?
Through a very normal casting process, I thought she was very interesting and first she said she couldn’t imagine herself in a movie, she’s a rebel like her character, so I asked her to come and she did a great audition, so I decided to work with her. Then two weeks before the shooting she cancelled, said she didn’t want to be in the movie. I went to see her mother with flowers and cake (laughs), Zsófia was worried about her life changing too much, she wanted to keep her regular life, so I had to convince her that the changes that would come from the movie would be good. Working with her was very easy, she followed directions very well, she’s very talented. I’ve worked with amateurs before, who are not “actors”, while Zsófia is different, she acted, I would like to support her in becoming an actress.
Was it easier to direct amateurs than to direct yourself in Tender Son and White God?
Yeah, in Frankenstein that was really planned, so it’s very ars poetica, talking about what is responsible in creation, but in White God it wasn’t planned, the actor who was to play the part I played cancelled two days before the shoot, and we didn’t want to lose the location, so the producers put pressure on me…”do you know anyone who is free?” (laughs) I actually don’t like directing myself, it’s really tiring and I have no control. In Frankenstein it was OK because I was telling the story of a filmmaker who was very critical and I wanted to criticize myself, it was clear, but in White God it was just a joke (laughs).
White God is now playing in select theaters.