TWILIGHT (SZÜRKÜLET)
Moving around the static
Spoilers for Twilight (Szürkület) (1990). Trigger warnings for discussion of suicide.
I saw György Fehér’s stunning anti-thriller in a double bill with Bela Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies (2000). The programming made sense. Fehér collaborated with Tarr at various points in his career and the two films shared cinematographer Miklós Gurbán, who uses deep black and whites to blanket both in shadows – a thematically perfect visual.
To call Twilight an anti-thriller might sound derivative but after the gorgeous overhead shot of the Hungarian forest, our introduction to the nearly retired inspector Felügyelõ (Péter Haumann) and his partner K. (János Derzsi) gives little hope that the case will have a happy ending. This is not a film about closure; instead, Fehér focuses on the limitations of justice and the obsession of those sworn to enforce it.
It should come as no surprise that this is based on the writings of Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Dürrenmatt believed that his 1958 script Es geschah am hellichten Tag (It Happened in Broad Daylight) was unrealistic as the detective solved the case at the last minute. His next work, The Pledge, would address this and was most famously adapted by Sean Penn for the 2001 film of the same name starring Jack Nicholson.
From the moment that a young girl is found murdered, by a killer known only as The Giant, Twilight shifts from a standard procedural to something more otherworldly. The Giant is the sort of off-screen monster that terminally online millennials would later call Slender Man – a cyclic horror that each generation understands as a terrifying irresistible force.
This means that while the characters each go through their stages of grief and helplessness, the plot remains static. By the end, we are no closer to discovering who is responsible for the crime. The cinematography represents this. Mounted on a dolly, the camera moves slowly around the characters, leading to incredibly long takes that lock in on faces to show the range of emotions.
This is perhaps most notable in the interrogation scene. Taking place in the first half of the film, the policemen pull in a travelling salesman. He’s tall, dressed in black and sells razorblades – matching the murder weapon. He was also the person to find the girl and is from out of town, meaning that he is really the only possible suspect at this point in the film.
Earlier, the belief in this man’s guilt is stark, as the camera glacially moves over the mob of villagers ready to enact swift justice, only to be stopped by Felügyelõ.
When the questioning starts, the camera pans slowly over the prisoner and the interrogators. All the time he protests his innocence, as they try to coax a confession. It’s one of the clearest moments of plot development in the film and Gurbán navigates the tight room with subtle movements.
Then, for what feels like the first time, the camera stops moving. Questions about what the salesman carried with him cause him to stumble over his words. To the audience, this feels too neat to be a real conclusion and it isn’t, but it starkly shows the biases, and desperation, that lead to police railroading suspects.
The tension grows as the camera stays static. We’re forced to look at the suspect as the police move around him, pushing him to create inconsistencies. As the interrogation progresses, we can see that the suspect has given up hope. That he is innocent, but this will not be enough when the village believes he is guilty.
Movement again. The questions stop and the camera reacts, once again panning across the room. The police end the interview and switch back to that ‘good cop’ mentality. They offer coffee and beer and take the suspect out of the room. Off-camera, he jumps from a stairway, ending his life and with it any suspicion of him.
The suspicion ends because while he dies, the murders continue. Like everything else, they happen off-screen, but the desperation of the police tells the audience what we need to know. Like Tarr, Fehér builds his monochrome world with as much unseen and untold information. His work places us in the position of an omnipotent being, watching the watchers and using their reactions to inform our understanding.
When the camera stops in that interrogation, it reacts as we would. That pause when it appears that something important is about to be revealed, and an almost shrug of movement when nothing comes from it.
Director: György Fehér
Writer: György Fehér. Based on the work of Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Starring: Péter Haumann, János Derzsi, Judit Pogány
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