Taxidermia - The National Student Magazine

Taxidermia represents a rare opportunity. It is unusual to see a film from Hungary make it to our shores. And Taxidermia is an unusual and disturbing film.

The story spans three male generations of a family. Beginning with Vendel Morosgovany (Csaba Czene) during World War Two, moving on to his son, Kalman (Gergo Trocasnyi) during the height of Communism. Finally coming to Kalman’s son Lajos (Mark Bischoff) in the present day. Each has a mental issue of some kind and each story is darkly bizarre.

Vendel’s problem is one of sexual frustration and sadomasochism. He plays with candles and masturbates until fire shoots from his penis. During the opening section director Gyorgy Palfi shows great visual imagination. A revolving sequence based around a bath tub showing great flair.

Kalman is an obese speed eating champion. There is a grotesque, almost shameful, humour in watching extremely fat people cramming food into their bodies. The men compete not only for the championship, but also for the affections of the female speed eating world champion, Gizella.

Kalman’s story spills over into that of his son Lajos. By this time Kalman resembles Jabba the Hutt and is restricted to his armchair. Lajos is the taxidermist alluded to in the title. He leads a sexually frustrated existence similar to that of his grandfather, with the masturbation replaced with the grizzly work of the taxidermist.

Each character has a destiny that is of a similar nature, as though their existence is controlled by a paternal source. The sins of the fathers.

Unfortunately as interesting as the ideas are, the characters lack sufficient depth to really care about what happens to them. Their stories and lifestyles are so far removed from reality that it is extremely difficult to connect with them. Each suffers in their love life, having to cope with rejection and frustration. Other than that they have little depth, nothing to make you understand what is driving them forward from within.

At times the levels of gore and depravity are hard to stomach. The opening scene shows fire shooting from a penis. This is followed by more masturbation. The second story contains the most vomiting I have seen in twenty minutes of celluloid and the climactic scenes are graphic and disturbing. It is questionable whether much of this is really necessary.

This Hungarian offering falls short in terms of emotional pull and empathy. It is too far removed from the world to truly drive home the interesting ideas that are at its core. The disgusting events that occur also distract from those ideas.

by Peter Prickett