Attila Szasz: Director

Review: Now You See Me, Now You Don't

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Now You See Me, Now You Dont
Director: Attila Szasz
Release: 2005

It is not just loss that permeates director Attila Szaszs Now You See Me, Now You Dont, it is the unending, insufferable confrontation over and over again with the mind-jail that loss recreates.

Dora Letay hovers in a sub-world to which she has been confined  to which she clings. Her tiny son, Alex (Vitez Abraham) is a nearly inscrutable presence in her house, approaching from behind, stopping in harms way, and then vanishing back into the rooms  silent to his mothers questions.

There is her husband, Alexs father (Erno Fekete), who works in a lab on something that has just succeeded in tests on mice. When he comes home, the silver box from his work clutched under one arm, he brings with him another strange inter-room dance  between spouses whose communications are relegated to stunted parallel words, never quite intersecting.

And then Alex disappears.

Not quite, however. Within hours, his voice whispers in mothers ear. His hand seems to brush hers. What has her husband done to the boy with the contents of the silver box?

The answer Szaszs provides is at once inevitable, not quite unexpected, and heart breaking.

Now You See Me, Now You Dont is a family thriller. It is very much a ghost story. Szasz and cinematographer Tamas Kemenyffys camera places the films audience in the luminescent funereal white household from little Alexs point of view. Shafts of sunlight possess the spectral intensity only young eyes perceive. Letay and Abraham are giant, sad, and statuesque in the lens. Simple object and colors achieve the hyper-detail that grief and fear can overlay.

The nature of the ghost is central to Szaszs world. An entity from without? Or a construct provided by the living  a vessel into which survivors pour their feelings and memories.

Szasz also explore the ways time influences such a vessel. The transformation of recall and pain by hours, days and months is as terrifying to Alexs parents as the notion that the past is there, in the house with them.

Finally, release is the note upon Now You See Me, Now You Dont concludes  a tremendous lifting of the lead that has settled over every alabaster surface in the characters house.

The underlying neurosis writ large, that the parents ultimate responsibility bears the ultimate price never spills over in a vulgar way in Now You See Me, Now You Dont, but it infuses the action with a sense of storm-warning. Be careful with these things one makes, Szaszs movie whispers. They do not fade quickly if stained.

A masterful moment in subtle genre filmmaking.

James OBrien
Cinescare Staff

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