14/11/2023 - In his sophomore feature, Mátyás Prikler examines the mechanics of power and morality through the story of a fatal hunting accident involving high-profile politicians

Someone wise once said that politics is the art of the possible. In order to achieve some common goal often described as the greater good, the interested parties have to make deals and compromises using money, power, influence and services as currency in deal-making. The trouble is that there is no strict definition of the greater good and no manual on how to define it. A seemingly ordinary but actually very complex situation illustrating this conundrum stands in the centre of Mátyás Prikler’s sophomore feature Power, which premiered earlier this year at IFFR and was just shown in the Network of the Festivals in the Adriatic Region programme of the Zagreb Film Festival.

It all starts with a hunting accident in which a young local man named Adam gets killed. Since the local police and the forensics cannot trace the bullet to any of the local hunters’ rifles and the hunting party included some high-ranking politicians, it becomes a sensitive question. Steiner (Szabolcs Hajdu), a former lawyer now employed in security services, is tasked with conducting the investigation with utmost discretion. The ailing man, who only has a few months left to live, reluctantly accepts the offer from his chief (Roman Polák) in order to provide some extra resources for his family.

The investigation gets him into the orbit of several players in the ethnically mixed part of the country. There is the family of the young victim, who want justice to be served. There is the suspected shooter, minister Berger (Jan Kačer), who is the official candidate for the role of EU strategic water commissioner and whose opponent runs on the platform that would allow the privatization of the water resources — neither he nor the government can allow for such a scandal to be made public. There is also a journalist (Lucia Kašová) in search of a big break, and a high-profile political scandal might serve her cause perfectly. Finally, there is a disgraced former cop named Ondris (Mihály Kormos) who might serve as an ideal fall guy and might want to make such a deal. Each of the characters mentioned, Steiner included, has some sort of a moral compass, which makes the ideal scenario less possible.

If judged simply for its merits as a political thriller, Power is bound to fail since there is almost no mystery about the event, the actions or the motivations of the characters involved, making the ending too logical and too neat. However, the film functions way better as a drama about ethics powered by moral dilemmas and as an examination of deal- and compromise-making. 

The script, co-written by the filmmaker himself together with Marek Leščák, is ornamented by realistic details of life in a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual provincial environment and largely populated by firmly drawn characters that nevertheless leave actors plenty of room for interpretation. Actor and filmmaker Szabolcs Hajdu seizes the opportunity to play Steiner in a restrained manner with a lot of integrity, while Jan Kačer as Berger does something similar but in a slightly higher emotional register.

In terms of direction, the frequent use of one-take scenes, framed with a sense of symmetry and filmed from fixed positions and from various distances, serves the film well. The execution on the part of the cinematographer Gergely Pálos, who shoots them in wintery tones that add to the cold atmosphere, is also astute, while the piano and strings score by Zsófia Tallér highlights the seriousness of the topic and Matej Beneš’ editing keeps the structure clear and the format efficiently compact. Power might not be the most philosophical or deepest study of the titular term crucial to politics high and low, but it works well in its simplicity and clarity.

Power is a Slovak-Hungarian-Czech co-production by the companies MPhilms, Proton Cinema, Negativ and RTVS - Radio and Television Slovakia.