Review of Dealer

Dealer (I) (2004)
3/10
Boring and political
10 December 2005
You might like Fliegauf's "Dealer" maybe if you haven't seen his earlier films. They are all clones, of which "Dealer" is at least the 4th of a kind, the others being "Is there life before death?", "Talking Heads" and "Rengeteg". His films use the same schema: extremely long close-ups of monologues. You can call this a "personal style", but it is also a trade-off for creativity and experimenting.

The reason why "Dealer" has been so successful in Hungary and elsewhere is probably because the issue of drugs is overpoliticised and it has been de facto taboo. In the last decade or so there have been very few Hungarian films on this topic, all of them were depicting drugs (undifferentiatedly) as the ultimate evil. "Dealer" certainly has a different approach, because it makes you mostly laugh at, and/or - to a lesser extent - feel sorry for drug users, whereas the other movies were intended mostly to make you hate drugs (and/or - to a lesser extent - also feel sorry for drug users). So this movie suits for both pro-drug and anti-drug people, because of not making any clear statements about the issue. It is yet to be seen whether Fliegauf or any other Hungarian director could make an intelligent and socially significant impact on the issue of drugs in Hungary.
8 out of 33 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed