The concept of an east european film that addresses a social commentary throught the perspective of a domestic animal has become, in recent years, a classic internet trope to denote something undecipherable and niche. Yet, György Pálfi’s Hen is probably his work that best fits the description of “crowd pleaser” in the most positive way.
A rooster escapes its destiny of ending up in a soup or as an egg-producer in a mass facility, and runs away from a truck driver’s vehicle. Thus starts an aviary odyssey throughout the greek landscape, dull and harsh, in which the creature faces the dangers of mythological creatures like foxes, of epic clashes between protesters, until she finds her apparent place, within a chicken coop of an old man who seems involved in some shady operations. The second half of the film splits between the animal’s own struggles and the story arc that sees the man come to terms with the human toll of his hustle.
The protagonist’s endeavours and the seven acting chicken’s lively performances make the film genuinely exhilarating. It remains a technical achievement that a film featuring something that on paper should have appeared as inherently experimental, ended up becoming something structurally and visually very conventional, through the masterful employment of the animal-actors but also the use of editing techniques like the Kuleshov effect. In many ways, Hen is probably the most radical demonstration that, indeed, the effect theorised by Lev Kuleshov in the early ‘20s can be applied universally.
The convention also leads to perhaps a not-too-daring storyline: the hen’s main purpose is that of maternity, and there is no overcoming of this struggle within her storyline. At the same time, the secondary story arc itself does point to a limited social commentary, but it remains rather secondary, perhaps too well hidden to matter enough, even if it does involve an actually dark subplot. Hen, much more than the recent film EO by Skolimowski, works without the awareness that Pálfi is also the rather experimental filmmaker that made such films as Hukkle, Taxidermia or Perpetuity: this film, unlike the others, constructs a storyline that is primarily entertaining and not provoking or hard to bear, and perhaps for the best. Even if the prejudices against such films prevented Hen from a wider audience, it very much is a film that can work for any viewer, and not a niche, hard to grasp experimental film, which is ultimately an advantage more than a limit.
RATING: 4/5