A WILD CSÀRDÀS OF REVENGE

Calgary International Film Festival’s Presentation of
A Halába Tábcoltatott Leány (The Maiden Danced to Death)

Laszlo Zsolt (Gyula Udvaros) and Bea Melkvi (Mari) on the Banks of the Danube.

Hungarian and Slovenian folk dances are so intricate, it takes years of practice to acquire the necessary precision and dexterity before the dancers can proceed at the breakneck speed of a professional company. One misstep, one forgotten element of movement, one careless moment of distraction and a Rube Goldberg’s progression of disasters unspins. When everything goes perfectly, however, the dance leaves viewers breathless, pulses racing like the dancers themselves.

The Maiden Danced to Death, a labyrinthine tale of treachery, betrayal and revenge, written and directed by Endre Hules, is like one of those folk dances. Each detail has been placed so precisely within the story’s structure that revelations unfold with breathtaking élan — always fresh, startling, unpredictable and unveiled at the moment of greatest impact. It takes a wild spin across two of the most beautiful cities in the world, Budapest and Montréal.

Twenty years after Pista Udvaros, played by Endre Hules, has been exiled from communist Hungary, he returns with a purpose. From the moment he sets foot outside the arrivals terminal under overcast skies and commandeers a taxi from under the people who hailed it, his character is established. Pista means ‘crowned’ and Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography takes us with him over Budapest’s famous ironwork bridge and up the cliff face, where palaces, the great Cathedral and grand hotels show Udvaros overseeing vast tracts of the Danube and its surrounding flatlands — a man of far-reaching vision, who knows exactly what he wants and allows nothing to impede him.

A jubilant reunion takes place with Udvaros’ younger brother, Gyula, and sister-in-law and one-time lover, Mari, in their dance studio, a place which has fallen on hard times now that the communists are no longer in power. The sedate colour pallette and muted lighting reinforce a sense of hidebound tradition. Even the signature company dance, The Maiden Danced to Death, has not changed since Pista left.

Bea Melkvi (Mari) and Steve Court (Endres Hules) engaged in an elaborate chess match.

The brothers literally dance Mari through the city streets to Gyulas’ apartment. There, they learn that Udvaros promotes folk dance companies in the west through the Steve Court Company. He is ‘Steve Court’, an impressario famous enough that they’ve even heard of him in Eastern Europe — and have sent letters asking for representation, although no word of a more personal connection has ever reached them.

Court is a cypher. Is the elder of the two brother’s return a matter of celebration, or a warning of darker business to come? And what has happened to the family he left behind in Canada?

A phone call, to the senior Gyula Udvaros, their father — forced upon Court by his brother and faced with resignation and acceptance — results in an exchange of bitter words, as both brothers seemed to know it must. These personal relationships are political, and the end of the old regime leads to a new power balance, reflected in Hungary and the Balkans.

Ancient Fertility Rituals and Blood Sport

Emőke Zsigmond (Gabi) reveals her qualities as a dancer.

As the movie’s title indicates, folk dances contain symbols for the social orders of their creators, and may include or reflect darker, more barbaric practices stretching back through the past to tribal origins. Just as Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring addressed the oft-times brutal rituals of the ancient Slavs, the Honvéd Dance Company’s Eastern European folk dances also depict a similar element of blood sport.

The company’s lead female dancer must pass her ‘crown of flowers’ to a younger woman just as they are on the cusp of international success. Marriages serve up aridity and deceit, meeting vulnerability with hostility and bitter humiliation. Children are alienated from parents. A father is publicly beaten in front of his daughter in a scene which pivots so much between ossified tradition and liberty, the viewer must choose where their own sympathies lie and what the cost of those beliefs entail in very graphic terms: who is led off in chains? Who is set free?

“The Maiden Danced to Death” referred to a punitive measure taken against a young woman who offended the strict and narrow social codes of farming communities and villages. A girl, deemed too flirtatious and seductive, is culled from society by those she rejects. She is danced from young man to young man until she is spun out of their circle and ostracized, left exhausted, without protection, as good as dead.

Shortly into the film, we learn the full cost of Court’s exile, but until the climax, we never learn the identity of the ‘maiden’ in this particular dance; every principle and most of the supporting actors have their moment of public excoriation. We only know for certain that the dance unfolds irresistably before us.

When the brothers ask why girls allowed themselves to be subjected to this sport, Mari explains, “What could they do? When you’re asked to dance, you dance.”

Smoke and Mirrors

The techniques of mirrors and smokescreens which Hules uses to misdirect his viewers recall the mechanical wonders and Vaudevillian stagecraft imported from Prague, Budapest and those great Medieaval capitals. Mirroring starts in earnest as we track Court back to the mountain over Montréal. The city is less stately and more modern, but the scene stretching beneath him is almost identical to the landscape he surveyed from the cliffs over Budapest. Emergency sirens provide an omen of what he awaits, both in his marriage and the company he founded.

Much is made of pacts with the devil, an archaic trope favoured by Eastern Europe pre-dating Goethe. Binding agreements, Machiavellan negotiations, masked identities — both onstage and behind the scenes — feature throughout the film, and it seems as though the plot will unfold with the usual cost of Faustian bargain, but this underestimates Hules’ skill as a storyteller. The true role of the contract is so unexpected as to leave the viewer nonplussed.

When Court tells Mari, “I’m just a ghost,” it seems as though ruin and desolation are inevitable, but Hules’ pulls out another astonishing surprise — one which shows the vibrancy and relevance of folk dancing to our modern age, just when it seems the craft no longer reflects our modern world.

From the Calgary International Film Festival, the film now proceeds to France.

A Halába Tábcoltatott Leány (The Maiden Danced to Death)

A joint Hungarian, Canadian and Slovenian production written and directed by Endre Hules.

Photography: Vilmos Zsigmond

Cast :
Endre Hules: Pista Udvaros/Steve Court
Bea Melkvi: Mari Udvaros
Laszlo Zsolt: Gyula Udvaros, Jr.
Boris Cavazza: Gyula Udvaros, Sr.
Deborah Kara Unger: Lynne Court
Stephen McHattie: Ernie Hatchet

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