As this is an East-European animation from the early 1980s, we must assume that it is An Allegory. These can be very difficult to interpret for the Western viewer. This film is probably only comprehensible to anyone who lived in Hungary at the time, each frame loaded with specific historical or cultural detail. The most that can be made out is the crushing of life - the fly begins the film very alive, hurtling through nature, and ends it squashed in a tray of other flies in a centre of civilisation - a Big House - loaded with statues and insect classifications. The paralells seem obvious. The fly's patterned halting to inspect its own shadow may be a hint of the film's own double nature.
Or it may be a dulled awakening of consciousness. This for me is the film's real achievement - the perfect mimicing of a scuttling insect's point-of-view, whirring through space, a vertiginous journey. The restless, sepiad animation is beautiful, allowing an untrammelled access live action never could, as the fly travels through sparse forest, over flat greenery, and up to the house itself.
The change from a barely sensed impulse of freedom to trapped panic is shockingly done - we move with the fly, interestedly examining the rather stiff furniture and ornaments (the apparatus of the state?) until we realise that it is these that will kill it: he will be squashed against some chair, pane or wall.
The house sequence opens with a joyous, privileged fly's eye view that would normally be denied to us, as it zooms through candles hanging from ceilings, making us rethink our own everyday accoutrements, space, even existence. Everything the fly meets is a voyage of discovery, new, not the dulled routine of a police state. This clear-eyed view can be very dangerous and must be crushed. The fly, as it tries to make its escape, can't understand, as he hits against the window, why he can see the open countryside - freedom - and yet can't escape.
The symbolism may be obvious, but it is terrifyingly effective. The brief journey from darkness through unthinking consciousness, to enforced darkness again, is awing, yet chilling. Most East-European animation seems to get lost in self-defeating, pretentious circles, but this is a wonderful film, with a clear, impassioned, angry yet humorous focus.
Or it may be a dulled awakening of consciousness. This for me is the film's real achievement - the perfect mimicing of a scuttling insect's point-of-view, whirring through space, a vertiginous journey. The restless, sepiad animation is beautiful, allowing an untrammelled access live action never could, as the fly travels through sparse forest, over flat greenery, and up to the house itself.
The change from a barely sensed impulse of freedom to trapped panic is shockingly done - we move with the fly, interestedly examining the rather stiff furniture and ornaments (the apparatus of the state?) until we realise that it is these that will kill it: he will be squashed against some chair, pane or wall.
The house sequence opens with a joyous, privileged fly's eye view that would normally be denied to us, as it zooms through candles hanging from ceilings, making us rethink our own everyday accoutrements, space, even existence. Everything the fly meets is a voyage of discovery, new, not the dulled routine of a police state. This clear-eyed view can be very dangerous and must be crushed. The fly, as it tries to make its escape, can't understand, as he hits against the window, why he can see the open countryside - freedom - and yet can't escape.
The symbolism may be obvious, but it is terrifyingly effective. The brief journey from darkness through unthinking consciousness, to enforced darkness again, is awing, yet chilling. Most East-European animation seems to get lost in self-defeating, pretentious circles, but this is a wonderful film, with a clear, impassioned, angry yet humorous focus.
