Tejút

A movie can simply be said to tell a story with a combination of many, many photographs. Well, Fliegauf's Tejút is certainly an exception to that too general idea; it feels like there are 10 different photographs telling 10 different stories (only 1 for each).

Tejút is a 2007 movie by Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf. It is kind of an ambient movie. Fliegauf is also a sound and set designer, and apparently, this is what made this movie so impressive. This is a highly experimental movie and Fliegauf states that he was not expecting any awards at all, however, Tejút received top 3 awards in Hungarian Film Week and 1 Golden Leopard. It is truly one of the most mind stimulating movies in the last few years, and definitely is groundbreaking.

The 10 different stories are presented to us from the view of a still camera, with precise compositions, shooting all the objects - including humans - from a certain distance. This turns the normal conversational movie telling into a blend of environment sounds with people murmuring, groaning, whispering and thus, even people become kind of an object. Moreover, about the actors, well, you cannot actually tell if who you are watching is an actor/actress or not; you only see a reality and these may have been some actual events' accidentally caught perfect shots, for the fact that the facial and therefore emotional expressions are not captured from this distance. Yet, this kind of an experience is not poor at all, for every single frame makes you feel the cold, the moist, the wind, the day and the night, as well as loyalty, love, disgust, anger and all in all, curiosity.

While the 10 stories and places are not linked to each other, the whole movie passes through a 24-hour time span. However beautiful and interesting the scenes may be, it takes a while to get used to watching the film; first 1 or 2 stories you simply look at without comprehension of what to expect, then you learn how to watch the movie. As well as the cinematography, the sounds are extremely well-refined, and you pass through a psychedelic perception from seeing to hearing in 75 minutes, realizing that a movie need not be telling us it all in order to be called a movie.

Pieces from Tejut
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