Jupiter's Moon (2017): Written
by Kata Weber, directed by Kornel Mundruczo. Starring:
Zsombor Jeger, Merab Ninidze, Gyoergy Cserhalmi, and Monika Balsai.
Running Time: 129 minutes.
Rating: 3.5/4
Given the long, long history of
humankind dreaming of flight before it became possible, I can't help
but feel this deep, profound desire within us to defy gravity is, in
part, a survival instinct; how many of us have had moments in our
lives, ranging from the simply embarrassing to the truly dangerous,
where we would have given anything, everything, to be able to simply
float away from it all, untouched and untouchable? How often has
each of us dreamed of such a thing happening in our lives?
Jupiter's Moon, the latest film
by Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo (who previously gifted the
world the criminally underappreciated White God in 2014),
takes this basic, almost childlike concept, and makes it literal in a
way that is both direct and ethereal all at once. Aryan, from Syria,
is part of a group of refugees slowly making their way via smugglers
through the Balkans, in the midst of the refugee crisis of 2015.
He and his father are traveling together, but are separated and also
lose their papers when their group is attacked and fired on in the
middle of the night by Hungarian border agents. This sequence,
beginning at night and continuing into the early hours in the
morning, is merely the first of several set pieces within the film
that are brutally effective in drawing the viewer into the
apprehension and terror felt by those on-screen, as people are shot
and/or drowning everywhere and no one knows where to go. It is the
table-setter for the storytelling feast that is to come.
As Aryan flees through the woods, he
runs into one of the head officers, a grim man named Laszlo, who
prompty shoots him several times in the chest. This should kill him
instantly. But it doesn't; instead, we see him rise above the
ground, slowly at first, then spin around and around in the air, the
Earth spinning around behind him, until he finally crashes to the
ground, where he is taken into custody. Soon afterwards, his
“ability” (which the film, to its credit, never attempts to
justify or explain) is discovered by Stern, a gruff and pretty
miserable doctor without a job who shakes down refugees for money so
as to pay the costs of a malpractice lawsuit.
Once he gets over his shock at what
he's seen, he initially tries to use Aryan to pay his debts,
promising him all the while he can help him find his father, retrieve
his papers, and move on out of Hungary. He starts marketing himself
as a “miracle healer,” paying visits to wealthy clients and using
Aryan's flying to coax them out of their life savings. As he gets to
know him, though- and as Aryan quickly starts to grasp Stern's real
motive for “helping” him- he starts to feel guilty, and for
seemingly the first time is able to really see his faults for what
they are. Not that either have much time for reflection, though;
Laszlo soon learns of Aryan's powers and starts to doggedly pursue
them, leaving them with fewer and fewer safe places within the city.
There are worlds upon worlds of
symbolism and meaning baked into the premise, the writing, the
characters, and the story, enough that I could rattle off a dozen
different interpretations of the film and still have breathing space
left. One visual theme that struck me, repeatedly, was an emphasize
on horizontal lines of sight. Many of the shots from Aryan's point
of view while flying show people down below, only looking straight
ahead, never up, and thus missing the literal miracle happening just
over their heads. We become so consumed with the material, with the
day-to-day, with “real life,” as we are so fond of calling it,
that we lose the ability for wonder, the ability to simply look up
and really see what's around us. When a character DOES look up, it's
clearly seen as an exception, a lone person having a rare moment of
genuine awareness.
These moments of flight are among the
most powerful in the film, where the movement of the camera and the
way the music and sound intensifies create a sensation to rival
anything in How To Train Your Dragon or the Superman
canon. Come to think of it, Superman was himself a refugee, so
perhaps that fits better that I first thought. In one particularly
memorable moment, he drifts down the side of an apartment building to
the street below. As he drifts lower and lower, he passes the
windows to the rooms in each level, where we briefly look in
different people engaged in different parts of life- having sex,
feeding pets, children playing, or just watching TV- and all the
while, the light casts his shadow across the building and the people
within. At times, it's not clear what, exactly, Aryan's powers are;
is he himself flying, or is reorienting and altering gravity around
his body? I suppose it's up to us to decide.
Not that the technical prowess of the
film is limited to flight; this film also has, for my money, one of
the most intense car chases ever put to film. As Stern and Aryan
attempt to drive away from the hospital, Laszlo pursues them in a
high-speed chase through the city. The whole scene is done in a
single shot, with the camera fixed to the front of Laszlo's car, so
that our eyes the entire time are near ground-level, moving at the
same speed as the car; we, alongside the car, swerve around incoming
traffic, fall behind, pull ahead, and at times bang into Stern's car
in front of us, until the chase finally ends in a moment that is
genuinely heart-stopping.
Zsombor Jeger occasionally runs the
risk of being a bit of an empty vessel as Aryan, but the concrete
stakes and clear goals for him- find his father, get to the train
station, get out of Budapest- allow him to ground the character as
someone who just wants a little peace back in his life. He never
asked for miraculous powers. Like every single one of the tens of
millions of real-world refugees around the globe, he never asked for
any of this. He never asked to be shot, to be chased, to be
demonized, to become a receptacle for the stereotypes, fears, and
selfish desires of people from a country, language, and culture he
knows nothing of. It's simply happened to him, and the only way he
is able to cope is to keep a laser-focus on a few, concrete goals.
Merab Ninidze and Gyoergy Cserhalmi
as, respectively, Stern and Laszlo, give powerhouse performances as
well, but sadly, the lone female character ( Monika Balsai), a fellow
doctor/girlfriend of Stern's who tolerates his use of hospital
facilities despite his probation, gets a somewhat short shrift. Her
character, and the particular struggles she deals with between her
job and Stern, not to mention the hell that breaks loose when Aryan
shows up, had potential to further expand the film's nuance, but it's
never really dealt with. It's the one major shortcoming in a film
that is otherwise damn-near perfect.
The closest thing to a thesis in a
movie that otherwise resists explaining itself is a line contained in
an exchange between Stern and Aryan while catching a rare moment of
rest. Speaking of the fears and failings in their lives, Aryan asks
Stern if there really is somewhere, anywhere, that is truly safe.
Stern responds, “There is no place safe from the injuries of
history.” Quite right. Unless, I suppose, if one could learn how
to just fly away.
-Noah Franc
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