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In 29-year-old Hungarian director György Pálfi’s film Hukkle, as in ordinary life, the rhythms of the everyday — the trot of a pig, the whirr and whiz of a sewing machine, the rituals of a beekeeper and of (gasp!) a murderer — add up to far more than the sum of their parts. Threaded together by the eponymous hiccups of an old man, this film explores a speck of a Hungarian village in its daily life with a sincerely appreciative musicality that at once describes that life and elevates it — its humor, its beauty — ultimately portraying that life as art. There’s essentially no dialogue, and just a few moments of what we might even vaguely see as “action.” Yet Hukkle‘s simple, gorgeous photography and rhythmic tale is done with such matter-of-fact perfection that it would be difficult not to be entranced by its hiccupping progression. 
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2004.
