Powerful acting in an uneven movie

    Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo's White God stands as one of the most riveting movies of 2014, a political allegory that made you gasp and left you wondering how its many scenes with dogs had been filmed

    A drama of shocking immediacy, Mundruczo's Pieces of a Woman marks the director's English-language debut and provides an opportunity for Vanessa Kirby to give one of the year's most emotionally naked performances.

     Familiar for having played Princess Margaret in The Crown, Kirby portrays Martha, a young woman who loses her baby during a home birth. The 23-minute scene in which Martha goes into labor was recorded by cinematographer Benjamin Loeb in a single agonizing shot. 

     Kirby's character, the baby's father (Shia LaBeouf), and a midwife (Molly Parker) are all caught up in a fraught, anxious moment. Taking place before the opening credits, the scene sets a high bar of intensity that the movie will have trouble topping. 

     Before the birth sequence, Mundruczo sketches the relationship between Martha and LaBeouf's Sean. He works in construction; she works in an office. He's a brusk jokey guy who knows that Martha's mother (Ellen Burstyn) thinks her daughter can do better.

    Clearly psyched about becoming a father, Sean's bustling energies and his sympathetic behavior during the protracted labor sequence keep us from dismissing him as entirely "boorish," a term he later uses sardonically in describing himself to Martha's mother.

     Martha, however, turns out to be the movie's driving force. Sean spins like a helpless wheel around Martha's increasingly distant behavior. At one point, he forces himself on her sexually, another scene that has generated much discussion.

    On one level, Pieces of a Woman deals with relationships, family, and grief. On another level, it's about acting, the way actors navigate heavy emotional waters, leaving themselves exposed as they deep dive into what feels like unprotected waters.

     But that doesn't mean that Pieces of a Woman succeeds as a drama. An uncompleted bridge becomes one of Mundruczo's several visual symbols, along with apple seeds. Whatever Mundruczo intended to convey with these visual metaphors feel labored. The movie's at its best when it's being literal and physical rather than symbolic.

    Another current animates the story. Burstyn's character wants her daughter to press charges against the midwife. Martha resists, opening the door for Burstyn to deliver a short monologue about having been a Holocaust baby. She follows by making an offer to Sean, which I didn't buy -- not on either side of the transaction.

         Anyone who ever has experienced or knows someone who has experienced the death of an infant during childbirth probably should think twice before seeing a movie that may strike them as too realistic, too evocative of a terribly painful experience.

    Those who approach the movie on a more neutral footing will find  a performance in which Kirby establishes herself as a master of mood and self-containment. It's as if she's in one movie and everyone else in another, which makes sense because Martha travels through the story in a state of extreme alienation. She's separated from everyone by an experience that can't be rationalized or even explained.

    Pieces of a Woman stands as a collection of scenes -- some quite powerful -- that demand a lot from its cast without ever totally cohering for us.

     

A startling and strange 'White God'

A disturbing movie that goes to the dogs -- literally.

The Hungarian film White God easily qualifies as one of the most disturbing films of the year. I'll go one better: It might be one of the most disturbing films you'll ever see, a revenge movie in which Budapest's mixed breed dogs take vengeance on those who treat them cruelly; i.e., just about everyone in the city.

Because director Kornel Mundruczo tells his story using real dogs -- lots of them -- it's fair to say that White God has no precedent in film history.

Uniqueness alone wouldn't necessarily elevate White God into anyone's upper echelon, but Mundruczo's movie is as riveting as it is novel, a sobering look at what happens when the natural world turns on those who abuse it.

It's possible (perhaps even advisable) to view White God as an allegory, but that doesn't mean that its vividly realistic style won't knock you for a loop.

The story begins when 13-year-old Lili (Zsofia Psotta) and her dog Hagen arrive to spend time with Lili's father (Sandor Zoster). Lily's mom and her current husband are off to Australia for a conference.

Zoster's character does not want to take care of both daughter and dog. Driven by frustration and anger, as well as by the trumped-up complaints of a neighbor, Dad wants the dog out of his apartment.

In Budapest -- at least in the movie version -- owners of mixed breed dogs must pay a heavy tax; it's a pure-bred dog world in Hungary. If you wish to draw larger, metaphoric conclusions about racism, have it. They're there for the taking.

Eventually, Dad forces Hagen out of his car, abandoning the poor animal to life on the streets.

It's instructive to note that Dad's job involves inspecting slaughterhouses, a touch that brings even more emphasis to the uneasy relationship between animals and humans.

Hagen isn't a cute or cuddly dog, but he's loyal to Lily, and she loves him. Fair to guess that the dog has become the main object of Lily's affections at a time when she badly needs to be loved and her parents aren't up to the job.

Dad's heavy-handed attempts to control of his daughter turn Lily into a surly teen-ager. Lily starts spending time with an older boy from the school orchestra in which she plays trumpet.

Remember that trumpet, Mundruczo will make moving use of it before the movie's done.

The film follows Lily's progress in searching for her dog and immerses us in Hagen's adventures, which -- dog-centered or no -- are thoroughly Dickensian. A thug turns Hagen into a fighting dog. He's brutalized and becomes brutal in scenes that are difficult to watch, even if you're not a dog lover.

We all know that animals have been trained to do lots of different things on film. But to make his film, Mundruczo had to train large packs of dogs to act in unison. The sight of what looks like hundreds of wild dogs racing through the streets of Budapest isn't something you'll soon forget. No digital dogs here.

Two dogs (Bodie and Luke) split the chore of playing Hagen; they acquit their species well.

It's not easy to believe that dogs would be able to dole out so much specific retribution, and by the end, Mundruczo has you wondering whether he'll be able to bring this war between humans and dogs to a satisfactory conclusion.

I think he does.

No fair telling more, but the final image of White God is unsettling and strange -- quiet, but also tentative and fraught. I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about what's going to happen in the 10 or so minutes following Mundruczo's amazing closing shot.

You'll need some of the information in the closing credits (no dogs were harmed, all dogs were adopted after shooting) to restore your sense of balance. But don't expect Mundruczo to bale you out during the film: He's not one to let an audience off the hook.

So here's a question to ponder: Dogs may be our best friends, but are we really their's?