White Palms

White Palms ***

Directed by Szabolcs Hajdu
Written by Szabolcs Hajdu

Starring:
Zoltán Miklós Hajdu as Miklós Dongó
Kyle Shewfelt as Kyle Manjak
Gheorghe Dinica as Ferenc Szabó aka 'Puma'
Andor Lukáts as Dad
Oana Pellea as Mom

97 Minutes(Not Rated-Language, Some Violence).
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The gym is quiet already. There is strange aura in the air as the little children prepare for something. One girl silently does a little flip on a bar over and over again, as if trying to get some fun out of the exercise. The other boys silently play, not speaking to one another as they do activities. And then the door slams open and the horror comes in.

"White Palms" is an interesting sports film, as it is unlike any one that I have ever seen. And leave it to the people of Hungary, who have made some films that I admire completely, to actually tell a sports story without relying on the old Hollywood ideas of sports-you know, that one coach that ends up changing everyone's lives with some kind of "words of wisdom." "White Palms" could be considered the "anti-sports film," as all of those cliches are twisted upside down as we watch a truly creepy and sometimes disturbing look at how things could actually be sometimes. Beginning in Canada we are introduced to Miklós Dongó, a very good athlete at gymnastics. He has come to Canada to be a teacher at a small gym, but seems uncomfortable by the warm greeting given by the head coach there. And then we flashback to a few years earlier, in Hungary, when Dongo was just a little boy, and that is the scene described above. Dongo was trained by a merciless and evil head coach who went by Puma. He'd start off with the boys lining up against a white chalked line, and then he would take a sword of some kind and trace the line, and if his sword crossed with the toes of any boy that ended up eking onto the line he would whip them in the leg, and the scar burns Dongo badly. Of course nobody believes that the coach would hit any student for something so small, and the parents disregard what the boy tells them. But the training is fierce and intense, with the coach not caring if the boys are having problems, or if they are hurt. And it is this training that is stuck into the mind of Dongo as he begins his work in Canada. It causes a problem when he hits a boy, and instead of giving him the boot, the head coach decides to give him Kyle Manjak to train, and Dongo makes it his mission to ensure that Manjak can win a competition, and at the same time decides to give the old sport a go by himself-having never won a national championship throughout his very expansive career.

"White Palms" ends up being a tragic story mainly because all of the Hollywood sports cliches are thrown down the drain. The Hungarian coach is one of the biggest examples of evil that I can find, and this character who is supposed to be a warm and caring type ends up being cruel and inflicting harsh punishment. And it is interesting to see this crossover to what I am used to. It is a tragic tale of cultural diffusion, as Dongo's behavior once he goes into Cananda and begins teaching does not leave a good impression of his country on the Canandian parents. And it is a tragic tale of the shattering of dreams and skill all because of a coach who simply does not know how to do his job properly. Throughout the flashback scenes of Dongo as a boy, the coach is constantly telling him that he is only one that actually has a chance at making a career out of this activity, but his coaching does not seem to try and make that a realistic possibility, which is why Dongo goes through what he does in the third act of the film. I will admit that I was a little put off by the ending, and the emotional arc seemed completed five minutes before the credits began-the finale at the Cirque de Solei performance seemed tacked on and the ending was extremely abrupt. I could not really see the point of that whole bit, and had it not had that ending, which left me distant from emotion when it should have been leaving an emotional impact, perhaps I would think slightly more highly of the film.

"White Palms" is certainly worth seeing, but it is not an easy film to get through. The sporting scenes are tough to watch because you never know what the coach is capable of doing next. You never know if he will release his anger through words and violence, and some images are shocking-not because of the graphic imagery, which there is not much of, but just the acts and the trials that the coach does and these kids have to go through to get through an afternoon of practice. I was more fascinated with the flashbacks than with the present day story, and there was something so gripping about the gym flashback bits that I could have probably sat through an entire film of just them. The teacher-student subplot in the third act is dark and a great trip away from the usual Hollywood sports story, but I still preferred the first half.

"White Palms" was not really given a full release by Strand Releasing, but in New York City it is playing at the theater in MOMA all week. This somewhat made my viewing experience awkward as many of the people that were in the screening room did not make the trip to the theater just to see "White Palms," but probably read in the program that the movie was starting at a certain time and just decided to poke their heads in. This resulted in people constantly getting up or coming in, and the elderly couple behind me with the wife who said, right when the credits rolled, "That was a hell of a bad film." But it is worth the effort to actually go to MOMA for the specific reason to seeing this. It is an interesting perspective on the sports genre, and just another grand Hungarian film.