Though Milky Way is perhaps Fliegauf’s most experimental film yet, it’s always accessible and mesmerisingly beautiful. It consists of ten lengthy landscape shots filmed with a static Scope camera, most of them featuring subtly modulated sound and human figures engaged in what initially appear to be strange, arcane rituals. There’s no overall plot — though the painterly scenes proceed from night through various exquisitely captured daylight hues and back to night again — but each vignette suggests some sort of small, mysterious narrative, be it suspenseful, sad or (as if often the case) drily funny. Rather like a cross between Herzog’s Fata Morgana, Kiarostami’s Five and the tableaux of Roy Andersson (with hints of Béla Tarr, Otar Iosseliani and David Lynch thrown in for good measure), the film nevertheless succeeds as a distinctively original look at the modern world — a fresh, deeply ambivalent look that never makes quite clear whether it’s the watchers or the watched who might in fact be aliens. —ica.org.uk
Born in Budapest in 1974, Benedik Fliegauf learnt all aspects of his trade. After training as a stage designer, he worked on film sets, for instance as assistant director to Miklós Jancsó and Árpád Sopsits. He also worked as an arts journalist and made television documentaries for various Hungarian broadcasters. Even without the official sanction of the film academy, he soon convinced the trade of his talent and skills. During the preparations for HYPNOS / HYPNOSIS (2002), the short in which he addressed the taboo subject of incest, he came to the attention of the producer András Muhi. The producer invited Fliegauf along to the Inforg Stúdió, a workshop for experimental film founded in 1999. Fliegauf has completed his films there ever since. After the festival distinctions won by his lowbudget RENGETEG / FOREST were matched by a good run at Hungarian art-houses, Fliegauf’s name was established on the Hungarian film scene. He has so far made three highly distinctive full-length fiction… read more
Perhaps the best way to describe this film is as a 'Songs from the Second Floor' in extreme slow-motion. Consisting of ten tableaux vivants, all beautifully composed exteriors, it presents an absurd and comical view of human life, in the slow pace of a wild life documentary. Read my full review: www.brnrd.net/blog/archive/2008/01/26/iffr-milky-way
don't deny yourself the experience of Tejút by watching it, and expecting it to be something, it quite obviously - is not.
