Using images and sound effects rather than conventional dialogue, this Hungarian outing from filmmaker György Pálfi takes us on an oddball journey through the life of a rural village and the investigations of a local cop (József Farkas). Even without subtitles, Hukkle (the title comes from the sound made by a hiccupping old man) builds into a curious blend of pastoral nature movie and murder mystery in which everything exists to be eaten. Comic and surreal, it's like an ominous Jacques Tati movie.
In the absence of dialogue, Pálfi creates a synthesis of sound and vision designed to tell what little story there is. The opening five minutes follow an old man hiccupping on a bench as life unfolds around him. Bunny rabbits hop, sheep graze, pigs furrow and ladybirds flap their tiny wings. Elsewhere, an old woman prepares food and a man goes fishing. It's an idyllic sun-soaked world, but beneath the surface (of the local lake) hides a secret: a dead body.
"COMIC AND SURREAL"
Pitting Richard Attenborough style nature footage against scenes of village life, Hukkle may be wordless but that's not to say it's thoughtless. Life cycles dominate as Pálfi invites us into a cruel world where everything's struggling for survival and everything is liable to be munched on by something else. Snacking fish are caught and eaten (prompting the film's finest moment: an X-ray vision shot of each mouthful of food entering the fisherman's body); a mole digging for grubs is caught by a farmwoman and thrown to the dogs.
The circular nature of life proves mysterious but the mystery of the (undiscovered) old man's body in the lake proves rather harder to crack. Hukkle ends with a Hungarian folk song (the only moment of chatter in the entire film): "If your husband has you seething/ Belladonna you must feed him/ Add some pepper, make it pleasing/ He'll be laid out by the evening". Could it have been something he ate?
In Hungarian with English subtitles.
Hukkle (2004)
