Gyorgy Kurtag--The Matchstick Man and Peter Eotvos--The Seventh Door.(Video recording review)

Gyorgy Kurtag--The Matchstick Man and Peter Eotvos--The Seventh Door. (Juxtapositions, 7.) DVD. Directed by Judit Kele. Paris: Ideale Audience International, 2005. DVD9DS16. $28.99.

Halfway through The Seventh Door, Pierre Boulez off-handedly remarks that "Hungarians are the best export in the world." It seems an odd comment, until you stop to consider the disproportionate impact musicians from this small Eastern European nation have had throughout Western Europe on music since 1945. This addition to Ideale Audience International's Juxtapositions series features Hungarian filmmaker Judit Kele exploring two of these "exports," Gyorgy Kurtag and Peter Eotvos, delving into their distinct musical universes to craft portraits of the composers at work and helping us discover why Hungary has played such an important role in defining Europe's contemporary musical culture.

The Juxtapositions series seeks to understand music by combining it with film and observing what the synthesis can tell us about each medium. Some releases, such as Frank Scheffer's probing The Final Chorale, focus on individual pieces of music. Others, such as Dorian Supin's 24 Preludes for a Fugue about Arvo Part and Eric Darmon's appropriately titled Looking Glass about Philip Glass, document their subject's lives by using music as the structure, the glue that holds the films together. In her films, Kele takes the second approach, offering slices of Gyorgy Kurtag's and Peter Eotvos's lives and splicing them together in ways that hopefully illuminate rather than obfuscate their aesthetics. Her method works beautifully in her portrait of Eotvos, but only adds to the enigmatic aura that surrounds Kurtag.

Filmed in 1996, The Matchstick Man was Kele's first documentary, and in her notes accompanying the film, she candidly remarks that Kurtag was hesitant about the project. As a result, she first developed a fictional story, a template from which to shoot. Although almost nothing remains of this original story, save for an awkward recreation of a moment from Kurtag's childhood, that initial idea must have colored her approach. The result is a film that talks about Kurtag and his music, but rarely delves under the surface into his motivations and desires. Kele appears throughout the film as a detective, interviewing composers and performers associated with Kurtag and filming the composer at rehearsals, but her subject remains a mystery.

This is not to say that the film is not beautifully shot nor lacks exquisite moments. The film's emotional center is a rehearsal ...