There
is something about the work of Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem that
inspires more ambiguous and open-to-interpretation adaptations than the
original source novels. Tarkovsky’s Solaris
is a classic case, but Ari Folman’s The Congress was no slouch. Neither is this. Gyorgy Palfi offers a Twenty-First
Century re-imagined, sequelistic vision of Lem’s classic Cold War-era novella
with His Master’s Voice, which
screens today at this year's Fantaspoa in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Like
many Lem novels, Voice is a first
contact story—sort of, but perhaps less so this time around. Regardless, Peter
Horvath’s father left dark, dreary Socialist Hungary in 1981 to study a gamma
ray phenomenon in America that he became convinced was a signal from space—and
he just stayed. Unlike his mother and disadvantaged brother Zsolt, Horvath
never really blamed him that much, but he always had a sinking feeling his
father really shouldered some of the guilt for three notorious explosions that
rocked Colorado (remember, it was gamma rays that created the Incredible Hulk).
With
the fall of Communism and the rise of online connectivity, Horvath sets out to
find his father, following the clues from a History Channel-style conspiracy
show and the remains of the old research facility adjacent to Los Alamos. Many
of his fears will be partly confirmed when he finally meets his father, now
known as Hogarth, but everything is much more complicated than he ever
suspected—cosmically so.
Palfi
pitches his material at a very high level and he engages in a fair amount of
mischievous flights of fancy, so expect to get a little lost once or twice.
That’s just going to happen. Fortunately, it is worth unpacking all his scientific
and philosophically speculation and following his narrative jumps. This is
ambitious story-telling and sophisticated sf speculation, but it has genuine
cinema substance at its core.
The
characters are also sharply-drawn and surprisingly engaging, especially
considering how out-there the film sometimes gets. Csaba Polgar portrays
Horvath as quite a dogged everyman, but Eric Peterson really creates an
impressively nuanced, multi-dimensional (so to speak) portrait of old Hogarth
(formerly Horvath). Adam Fekete (who also co-starred in Kills on Wheels) is convincingly whip-smart and angry as heck as
Zsolt. However, Diana Magdolna Kiss does not have much significant business to
perform as Horvath’s lover Dora, who seems to magically visit whenever his is
in need of a quick booty call.
There
are some metaphysically significant plot points that are just left hanging at
the end of Voice, but that is in
keeping with the Lem spirit. Palfi’s outrageous visual stylings similarly fit
Lem’s themes like a glove—the early sequences in which old, yet-to-be-revealed
Hogarth/Hovarth’s face appears to be cut out of the film with scissors is one
of the easier examples to explain. This is a smart, strange film, but that is to
its credit. Highly recommended, His
Master’s Voice screens today (5/29), as part of Fantaspoa in Porto Alegre.
