Taxidermia is a Breathtakingly Artistic Feast of Visual Insanity
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Taxidermia may not be strictly horror, but some of the sequences in it are harder to watch, gorier, and more deranged than most actual horror.
Written by James “Crypticpsych” Lasome
May 9, 2010
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Release: 2006-2008 (Various Festivals), April 6, 2010 (US DVD)
Directed by: György Pálfi
Written by: György Pálfi, Zsófia Ruttkay, and Lajos Parti Nagy (original short stories)
Starring:
Csaba Czene as Morosgoványi Vendel
Gergely Trócsányi as Balatony Kálmán
Marc Bischoff as Balatony Lajoska
Taxidermia is a Hungarian film that is, at its core, simply the story of three generations of Hungarian men and the events that shape their lives (based off short stories by Lajos Parti Nagy). It’s what’s in their lives that’s so bizarre, so taboo, and what makes this film the kind the viewer remembers forever.
First, we meet Morosgoványi (Czene), a Hungarian soldier in World War II with a harelip. Morosgoványi is many things. First and foremost though, he is a man with an active imagination. Most of his mental journeys revolve around sexual pleasure. He fantasizes about the pretty women in the barracks and the rather large older woman who also lives there. Much of his life is predicated around sex, whether it be peeping at women bathing, imagining himself transported into the fairy tale “The Little Match Girl” and using it to masturbate, and, the first thing one sees in the movie, imagining that his penis can shoot fire.
Through one of the more bizarre sequences in the movie (that simultaneously touches on a form of bestiality in addition to general sex), Morosgoványi manages to impregnate the older woman, seemingly immaculately. The woman then gives birth to a happy boy…with a pig’s tail. After the tail is removed, the boy grows up and we enter the film’s second 
act, following Kálmán (Trócsányi), who has grown up to become a rather large man and a competitive speed eater. In this movie’s reality, competitive speed eating has become a worldwide pastime and sport, watched by large crowds of cheering fans who revere the competitors like Gods. The “sport” includes both the eating of vast quantities of food…and the profuse vomiting of said food back up (usually during scenes that also feature regular dialogue in between the puking). Kálmán falls in love with an equally large woman, also a speed eater, and elopes with her in the middle of what was to be a rival eater’s wedding to her. They have a child as well.
In the third act, this child of two very large people has grown up into Lajoska (Bischoff), a scrawny, thin, near-albino man who has quite the talent for taxidermy. In addition to his daily renowned life in that field, Lajoska also takes care of his father’s cats (who are being “trained” to be speed eaters) and his father…who has reached a level of obesity that makes Jabba the Hutt look like Richard Simmons. Kálmán is perpetually disappointed with and disgusted by his thin son and was left by his wife who went to coach the Hungarian national team in Olympic speed eating. Lajoska is growing rapidly disenchanted being continually insulted by the man who he has devoted his whole life to caring for and has an angry falling out with his father. While he relents later, it may be too late to rebuild the bridge.
Doesn’t sound like horror, does it? That would be because, rather than being a “strict” horror film, this is actually more of a…deeply insane artistic vision. We are talking about a film that in some way or form covers: sex addiction, masturbation, pedophilia, bestiality, suicide, obesity, overeating, vomiting, celebrity culture, taxidermy, and…art. Somehow, undeniably, this film is a work of art. Whether it be the sequence where Morosgoványi thinks about all the people who have used a bathtub (and the film shows each person in it, flipping the screen up down and around) or the final sequence of the film, which I won’t spoil, but which takes an idea that could be done in any gory horror movie and turns it into a true work of art in more ways than one, this film shows how to take some of the most disturbing, taboo, and even disgusting visuals and make them beautiful.
The first and third parts of the film, particularly Marc Bischoff’s performance, are the best parts of Taxidermia. Bischoff’s Lajoska is easily the most identifiable of the characters in Taxidermia, making you truly feel for his lot in life and hate his father, hoping he will grow beyond them into something greater. Meanwhile, the first segment is filmed so beautifully that, while you’re seeing things that cannot possibly be real, they still have meaning and make sense in the story. Taxidermia’s weak point is its second segment. Many of the characters in it look very similar so it was quite hard to distinguish between the two rivals for a fair amount of the sequence.
Taxidermia is an art film for horror fans. It won’t scare you but it will visually shock you and blow your mind. I really wish I’d been at Cannes in 2006 so I could have seen the looks on the intelligencia’s, both horror and otherwise’s, faces when this pure, unadulterated slice of artistic insanity unspooled before their eyes. Questions or comments about Taxidermia? Discuss it on The Ossuary Forums!
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