His Master’s Voice
Canada, Hungary, France, Sweden, United States • 2018This head-spinning, divisive sci-fi drama by Hungarian arthouse experimenter György Pálfi (Hukkle, Taxidermia) adapts, loosely, one of Polish writer Stanisław Lem’s most esteemed works, the philosophical novel His Master’s Voice (Głos Pana—“The Voice of the Lord”—in the original Polish).
When Péter (Csaba Polgár), a Hungarian journalist, glimpses his missing-for-decades father in a documentary about a mysterious incident in Colorado that has long obsessed conspiracy theorists, he travels to America to investigate, and becomes embroiled in strange events involving secret government programs, Cold War politics, and, perhaps, extraterrestrial contact.
The film’s dizzying array of multimedia formats and disorienting shifts in mood and tone are director Pálfi’s analogues for the complexity and range of Lem’s deeply ruminative original.
Synopsis courtesy of The Cinematheque, Vancouver
Written & directed by: György Pálfi
Co-written by: Zsófia Ruttkay
Based on the novel by: Stanislaw Lem
Starring: Csaba Polgár, Marshall Williams, Kate Vernon, Jenna Warren, Eric Peterson, Ádám Fekete
Run time: 108 minutes
Language: Hungarian, English
Subtitles: English
Color: Color
Format: 1.85:1
Sound: Dolby
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* Also available, György Pálfi's short films A Hal (1997), Shaman vs Icarus (2003), and I Will Not Be Your Friend (2009)