Defekt

A bunch of lines on a page, joining and diverging, lines breaking off, lines coming back in. This is the image that comes to mind having watched the 1977 Hungarian thriller Defekt, a delightful little film that feels like a rejection of the procedural, a reflection of the chaotic nature in which mysteries are often resolved. It is by chance that our heroine manages to survive the serial killer, it is by chance that she isn't discovered by the detective investigating that killer, and then when she confesses to an entirely unrelated policeman it is by chance they find the bodies of the women he had killed previously. All the while the striving detective weaves around ever actually finding his man, all his activity for naught.

Shot on a shoestring, it is still executed with a degree of ambition, effectively creating a foreboding night time world outside the reach of the socialist state. That's probably how one could read it, that it is a meditation on the finite nature of the state even under socialism, that it can't entirely stop monsters arising in its periphery, and in a world of such complexity, sometimes things are indeed a matter of luck. At the same time though, perhaps our heroine would have only gotten one flat rather than two and been able to use her spare. Perhaps the detective might have noticed the lane to killer's house earlier and searched it. Perhaps the very first victim of the killer might have lucked into killing him herself and this whole sordid affair would never have happened. Perhaps the line might have been a lot shorter and straighter.

- KS