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IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: SUBWAY (1985)

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DIRECTED BY: Luc Besson

FEATURING: Isabelle Adjani, , , Michel Galabru, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Jean Reno

PLOT: Fred, a free-spirited thief, absconds with valuable papers belonging to Héléna, the kept wife of a powerful criminal, and escapes into the underground world of the Paris Métro, where he enlists the help of an entire community living off the grid.

COMMENTS: Subway gets started with a truly satisfying kick. We meet Fred in media res, tuxedo-clad and barreling down a Parisian highway in a cheap car with a load of similarly attired muscle in hot pursuit. But he even knows that the chase doesn’t really begin until he’s got the proper music, and so he ignores the impending threat just long enough to give him the chance to slam in a cassette tape and queue up Eric Serra’s punchy synth-funk beat. Once that roars in, we’ve got ourselves a bona fide chase.

It’s a very Luc Besson kind of joke that, once Fred (Lambert, only a year after being introduced to English-speaking audiences as Tarzan) eludes his pursuers in the underground, we’ll never see him in the sun again, and we definitely won’t have another thrill ride. Instead, we’ll join Fred in discovering the very different way of life taking place in the tunnels of the Métro. It may seem familiar, with commerce and law enforcement and entertainment, but it’s a very different attitude down there. It’s a laid-back, “que sera, sera” kind of vibe, and Fred adapts to it quickly; in his first night, he meets friends who give him food, new clothes, and a place to sleep; he makes the acquaintance of an incredibly strong man who can pry open handcuffs with his bare hands; and he pops into an impromptu party where he immediately starts making friends. If Fred is a natural fit for subway life, Héléna, the gangster’s wife who Fred is both smitten with and cheekily blackmailing, is a more surprising addition to the community. Adjani is stunning in a series of terrifically 80s outfits, but she is possibly most striking in a scene where she returns to her above-ground life and realizes that she can’t stomach it. She gently ingratiates herself into the Métro culture, because that’s what the good guys do in Subway.  

Subway is one of the pivotal entries in the French movement known as “cinéma du look,” in which Besson and fellow directors like Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax cast aside distractions like narrative in favor of maximum style. Subway has style to burn. Indeed, logic is not anyone’s top priority. One thing may be important at one moment and forgotten the next. Sure, Fred is on the run from zealous policemen and vengeful gangsters, but that’s no reason he can’t take a quick time-out to rehearse the amazing new band he’s assembled out of the various buskers hanging out in the underground. There’s even time for him to team up with the well-connected flower salesman for a quick payroll robbery. Things just happen in Subway because it would be nice if they did. If you’re spending time wondering where Fred finds the explosives to blast open an office safe, or where the band comes up with their matching safari outfits, your head’s in the wrong place.

What’s most fascinating about Subway is how little it cares for the basics of story construction. There are a host of characters, all interesting but defined by the fewest possible characteristics, from the hard-bitten police detective who despises his junior officers, to the friendly purse thief whose primary trait is wearing roller skates, to the bemused drummer played by Jean Reno who hardly utters three sentences but still seems cooler and more relaxed than in any other role in his career. There’s a romance, but it’s conducted almost entirely smoldering looks and chill dialogue. There’s even a climactic collision of passion and violence that is tempered by a happy song to such a degree that even a corpse can’t help but nod along. It doesn’t make sense, and it’s not supposed to. Subway is made of pleasant little moments, and like the people they depict, we just take them as they come.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“There’s nothing that’s ever boring in this one, but it is definitely paced differently than many may be used to.  It is less about the Plot directly and more about the ambiance of the area…  Getting the balance between ‘weird, slice of life Story’ and Plot-driven Film is tricky.  Thankfully, this one balances it quite well… The Ending is a bit odd, but, you know, French.” Alec Pridgen, Mondo Bizzaro

(This movie was nominated for review by Gary Simanton. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)         

76. KONTROLL (2003)

“I had something in mind for most of the scenes and images in the film and almost without fail, people have interpreted those moments differently… What I’ve really learned in this process is that it doesn’t really matter what I think I’m doing, that’s the beauty of it really, that once it’s out and there are all these hundreds of other eyes trained on it, it becomes a conversation.”–Director Nimród Antal on symbolism in Kontroll

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Nimród Antal

FEATURING: Sándor Csányi, Eszter Balla, Bence Mátyássy, Gyözö Szabó, Lajos Kovács, György Cserhalmi

PLOT: Bulcsú, a Budapest metro transit cop, copes with eccentric passengers and incompetent coworkers as he pursues a veiled serial killer.  Living and sleeping in the tunnels, Bulcsú is bullied by tormentors, chases gang members, dodges trains and follows a mysterious girl as he tracks a murderer who pushes passengers under speeding engines.  As the killings continue unabated, suspicion eventually turns toward Bulcsú himself.

Still from Kontroll (2003)

BACKGROUND:

  • Director Nimród Antal was born in Los Angeles (of Hungarian ancestry) and moved to Hungary to study filmmaking at the Hungarian Academy of Drama and Film. He made his first feature film, Kontroll, then returned to the U.S. to direct conventional Hollywood products, most recently Predators (2010).
  • The city of Budapest allowed Antal access to the subway system to shoot the film during the five hours per night the trains did not run.  A man claiming to be the Director of the Budapest Metro appears in a prologue to the film to stress that Kontroll is a work of fiction and that real Metro employees do not behave in the ways depicted.
  • Kontroll won the Prix de la Jeunesse (Prize of the Young) at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. It was the first Hungarian film to screen at Cannes in twenty years.
  • Antal cited Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick, Terry Gilliam, Martin Scorsese, and Beat Takeshi as influences on Kontroll.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: The most enduring image is a metaphor for the troubled Bulcsúis’s transcendence. The kontroller hides in the underground sanctuary from the real world above. But the outside is only a symbol. Bulcsú is really seeking refuge from himself and his feelings. Uncertain about his own emotions, and lacking in confidence, avoiding the world above is his way of postponing self-confrontation. What then, can be more symbolic of his waiting deliverance than the symmetrical image of the great, silvery, central escalator leading to the bright lights and certain reality of the surface? Bulcsú knows he must eventually ascend it but he has not yet the courage to face that eventuality. Will his love for the mysterious, bear-costumed Szofi become the key to unlocking his emotions and freeing himself?

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Kontroll is a fantasy that stands alone in its enigmatic singularity. The film craftily assimilates drama, suspense and social satire into a multifaceted story in the unusual setting of an Old World subway. Director Antal surprisingly succeeds at combining an unlikely set of plot elements. He decants the chaos of social rambunctiousness, the absurdity that entails when authority dictates regulation at the simplest levels of its jurisdiction, and a survey of attitudes and life’s daily ironies into an imaginative story. The resulting integration creates a unique, alternative viewing experience.


Original English language trailer for Kontroll

COMMENTS:  Hydraulics hiss, rails clatter, and trains blast at high speeds in the dimly lit, Continue reading 76. KONTROLL (2003)

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: KONTROLL (2003)

Kontroll has been upgraded to the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies of all time. Please visit the full certified weird entry for Kontroll for comments and deeper coverage of the film.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Nimród Antal

FEATURING: Sándor Csányi, Bence Mátyássy, Eszter Balla, Gyözö Szabó, Lajos Kovács, and György Cserhalmi

PLOT: A Budapest metro transit cop copes with eccentric passengers and coworkers as he

Still from Kontroll (2003)

pursues a veiled serial killer.  Living and sleeping in the tunnels, Bulcsú is bullied by tormentors, chases gang members, dodges trains and follows a mysterious girl as he tracks a murderer who pushes passengers under speeding engines.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Kontroll is a fantasy that stands alone in its enigmatic singularity.  The film craftily assimilates drama, suspense and social satire into a multifaceted story in the unusual setting of an Old World subway.   Director Antal surprisingly succeeds at combining an unlikely combination of plot elements.  He decants the chaos of social rambunctiousness, the absurdity that entails when authority dictates regulation at the simplest levels of its jurisdiction, and a survey of attitudes and life’s daily ironies into an imaginative story.  The resulting integration presents a unique, alternate viewing experience.

COMMENTS:  Hydraulics hiss, rails clatter, and trains blast at high speeds in the dimly lit, neural convolutions of the Budapest underground.  A man runs for his life through a tunnel between two trains.  A hooded figure emerges from cracks in the wall to launch the unwary under oncoming subway cars.  A puzzling girl (Balla) haunts the maze-like passages disguised as a bear.  Ticket inspectors engage in madcap jousts and chases with each other when they are not comically pursuing a colorful assortment of freeloading ruffians.  A host of eccentric characters cavort and couple in a subterranean round-table of flickering signal lamps, iron Continue reading RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: KONTROLL (2003)