Taxidermia Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
Three stories. Three generations. Three men. One bizarre and shocking universe.
Gyorgy Palfi's grotesque tale of three generations of men, including an obese speed eater, an embalmer of gigantic cats, and a man who shoots fire out of his penis.
| Csaba Czene | Morosgoványi Vendel |
| Gergely Trócsányi | Balatony Kálmán |
| Piroska Molnár | Hadnagyné |
| Adél Stanczel | Aczél Gizi |
| Marc Bischoff | Balatony Lajoska |
| Gábor Máté | Öreg Balatony Kálmán |
| Zoltán Koppány | Miszlényi Béla |
| Géza D. Hegedüs | Dr. Regõczy Andor |
| Erwin Leder | Krisztián |
| Géza Balkay | Szovjet tábornok |
| Attila Balogh | Csehszlovák versenyzõ |
| Péter Blaskó | Orvos |
| Csaba Cseh | Versenybíró |
| György Pálfi |
7.30 out of 10 (1581 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Disgusting yet beautiful, "Taxidermia" is a stunningly original and audacious work
posted on 25 Aug 2009"Taxidermia" is one of the biggest surprises I've had with recent films. It has a blend of disgusting and shocking acts rendered poetic with absolutely beautiful camera-work and style. Even at its grossest, one isn't nearly as repulsed as they should be. And trust me, there's a lot of deviant behavior (including bestiality, masturbation, feederism, and vomit) on display here. Its all credit to director György Pálfi, who has crafted one of the most original visions in recent cinema. Its far from a perfect film, but its sheer audacity is refreshing compared to the safe and sterile cinema coming from all over the world today. Its a throw back to the 70s, when filmmakers had the guts to load the screen with offensive and politically incorrect imagery to force the viewer to think.Don't mistake this as being merely a shock value fest. There's a good amount of subtext and depth to the film in a manner similar to Takashi Miike's finest work. The acting is very good, and the performers manage to make their deviant characters oddly human and sympathetic despite the increasingly surreal nature of the film. The film is flawed (the middle section in particular lags pretty badly), but I'd rather watch an interesting if imperfect film any day than successful tripe. "Taxidermia" is a film I feel will become a cult classic in the years to come. Not for all tastes, but those interested will love it. (8/10)
i felt sick the whole night...
posted on 20 Feb 2009there are some films that you watch and recognize that it is good, but your insides are screaming - this is horrible. that pretty much sums up the entire experience of this film. if you truly enjoy yourself watching the film, really love it in the moment, then i think you missed the point (and probably are kinda scary and desensitized). but after your stomach stops turning, you are left with a film that has pushed past the regular or expected, into a space of unique social and political commentary. As disgusting as this film is, and it is by far the most disgusting thing i've ever seen, it absolutely has to go that far to shake people up.
Sick, gruesome and deviant. I love it.
posted on 25 Jan 2009A soldier with a rich sexual fantasy and lots of time on his hands (or better said, with his hands). An obese man competing in eating contests. A taxidermist. What do they have in common? Well.. Quite simply put.. Part of their genes. They are, respectively, the grandfather, the father and the son. Welcome to Taxidermia, perversity grand central.The film plays out in three parts. Starting with the soldier, followed by the obese man, followed by the taxidermist. At the end of each part the connection to the next is worked out, and it all makes sense, in a twisted way.Each of the parts is a barrel of laughs, dark and grim in its own. Often disgusting and revolting but most of the time just hilariously cynical.Effects used are mediocre at best but that doesn't harm the film too much - it is mostly the comedy value that is to be appreciated. Way of filming is off the beaten track, but not so far that it becomes disturbing or genuinely brilliant.Sick, gruesome and deviant. I love it.9 out of 10 kilograms of lard eaten
Surreal but a bit dull.
posted on 03 Jan 2009This film aims for shock value rather than plot.We see several generations of a family who are all strange in different ways.The ideas are certainly original and the film moves at a good pace. There are a few twists as we follow the characters and get a view of their quite brutal and unpleasant lifestyles.The reliance on disgust is boring though, if you aren't shocked by the imagery then you aren't left with much else.The dialogue is minimal and the characters aren't likable, we are supposed to see them as exhibits not develop empathy for them. This leaves the film feeling slightly dead with no emotion and no real impact.Watchable for the weirdness but would certainly offer nothing worth a second viewing.
three generations of fairly twisted fellows
posted on 06 Nov 2008Beginning in World War II-era Hungary, two soldiers stay at a remote country home. The sexually frustrated soldier Vendel (Csaba Czene) concerns himself with myriad masturbation techniques while watching his commanding officer's wife and daughters. The product of his frequent seed spillage, Kálmán (Gergo Trócsányi), grows to comfort his country as a champion eater. While the International Olympic Committee refuses to recognize his sport, Kalman remains stolid and captures the heart of Gizella (Adél Stanczel), a fellow female champion. Their heir, Lajos (Marc Bischoff), has not inherited an ounce of his parents' impressive girth. This sickly lad lives a life of quiet desperation as a taxidermist. A disappointment to his corpulent father, Lajos finds a few lucky solutions to solve his problems.Following these three generations of fairly twisted fellows, TAXIDERMIA is light on plot but heavy on visuals. Visceral often to the point of being gross, few bodily fluids and orifices go unseen in Palfi's sophomore feature effort. Recommended.
Taxidermia
posted on 09 Jul 2008I have seen many unbearable films in my life, some I loved and some I couldn't give a crap about, and this a good example of an interesting one. The bigger thing about seeing this independent film was that I saw it at the 22nd Santa Barbara Film Festival while on a college trip, I had a fantastic time. Anyway, it is basically about three generations of men. The first is a lieutenant or something who works on a film, and during his time shoots fire from his penis (like a Bunsen Burner), puts spunk on a wall, has his knob pecked by a chicken, and has sex with either a really fat woman or a pig. He has a kid, with a pig tail that is cut off, and he grows to be the second guy, a fat speed eater that pukes a lot, enters some eating competitions, falls for a fat woman, and has a son of his own. This third guy is the taxidermist, and as far his dad, he has turned into what looks like Jabba the Hutt. The worst, or best (whatever you think) part is the climax where the last guy opens himself, and empties himself of almost all his insides (loads of blood may have made me more queasy, but I wasn't), he sews himself back up, decapitates himself, and the machine chops off his arm, and the finished result looks like the Venus De Milos statue in a gallery. Some good camera effects, including the revolving bath tub scene, and pretty realistic effects, this is a good example of foreign films get away with a lot. Worth watching!
Brilliant piece, though Pasolini does not seem so gory any more
posted on 03 Jun 2008Taxidermia is the goriest, most disturbing and most disgusting film I have ever seen, yet is one of the greatest feats in 21st century movie-making. It is dark and repugnant, but very deliberately so. It is not at all self-indulgent, although it might seem that at first glance. One cannot help but realize that all this gore is meant with purpose, that this sickening texture of coherence is what gives this satire its peculiar authenticity. L'art pour l'art gruesomeness really gets my goat, but in this case everything falls into its right place. Although I got physically sick watching it, I have to admit I am an admirer of Taxidermia.We see three generations of men from a strange family: an army orderly obsessed with one-sided sex, his son, an acclaimed speed-eater, and an animal preparator. They are all peculiarly abnormal in their own ways but so is everybody else in the twisted world Gyorgy Palfi has created. But we all know that however deviant a world is on screen it merely is a reflection of our even more deviant everyday life. What Palfi tries to put across is that in our society sick is not even sick any more, dementia is not dementia any more, and we are ready to accept any defect or corruption of mind as long as they serve the self right in his quest for creating something new, something with which he can stand out from the crowd even more. Search for the inner genius justifies everything.
Graphic and strange, but funny and REALLY well-made
posted on 01 Jun 2008Told in three parts, TAXIDERMIA is about the last three generations of Balatony males, a trio of men each weirder than the next.The film begins with the grandfather, a lonely, sex-starved soldier with cleft lip and a fire fetish. In his spare time, which is rather often, he daydreams and masturbates, visualizing shooting stars into space and using his penis like a blowtorch. Somewhere along the way, he screws his commanding officer's fat wife, gets his head blown off, and bares a son with a tail, which is promptly snipped off. Thus his chapter ends and his sons begins.The father is a competitive eater for Hungaria, a national hero of sorts with a huge belly, a patented vomit technique, and a lovely and equally fat and talented competitive-eating wife. Their love is initially tested, but they eventually fall for each other and have a child.Skeletal and insecure, the last of the Balatony's owns a taxidermy shop and takes care of his now divorced and shut-in father, who has nearly tripled in girth. At his father's request, the son tends to a trio of house cats the father has devised to enlarge in order to reclaim his long lost celebrity...of course, their relationship is very strained, and they have a heated argument. The son leaves, unknowingly leaving the cat's cage door open, and returns to find his father dead and a trail of intestine leading to the growling felines. In an artful turn of events, the son stuffs his deceased father, straps himself into an ingeniously made surgical chair, removes his organs, sews himself up, and kills himself.TAXIDERMIA is extremely well-made; great camera angles, style, acting, music, and effects. It is pretty disturbing however, and it's variety of extreme close-ups include genitalia, self-surgery, barfing, masturbation, and yes, taxidermia.One of the more unique and creative films I've seen in a while. Really good stuff if you like your films stylish and disturbing.
Laughable if it weren't so cynical about humanity
posted on 25 Mar 2008We sense the movie's love/hate relationship with all things flesh very soon. It's bodily fluids, food, animals, the dead and repeat. To any of these the film applies a perversity, and a fascination in their spectacle if carried out disgustingly. The film is a presentation, albeit an occasionally funny one, of human's ugliest and basest instincts – so much so that maybe even the humor is part of that cycle.All of it gets old very fast. The concept is just a creepy fetish, saying about human existence as much as flower power kitsch. It can be argued that the film is directed with a certain style but to me the mise en scéne seemed self-serving, a signpost of this being art. More importantly though, the film is constantly condescending towards its characters and though the purpose was probably to blame all the ugliness on our existence or on Communist states, finally the condescension and bestiality is all Palfi's.
Crazy people can do very foolish things!
posted on 31 Jan 2008Definitely it's not a movie for everyone! You need to have a strong stomach to see this film until the end! The plot is about a Hungarian family and the way it develops over three generations; and what crazy family I must say! From the first to the last generation all we see is a bunch of foolish people doing foolish things! The guy from the first generation is a sexual maniac soldier that even does a sexual act with a dead pig imagining he's doing it with a fat old lady… The guy of the second generation is a fat (but a really big one!) champion of food contests that eats kilos of food in few minutes to throw up it all a bit later in order to eat some more kilos again! The third guy, son of the last one, irony of destiny, doesn't seems at all to his father (and his mother too), because he's thin as a bone... He works as an embalmer and he's the only person who keeps seeing his father, now a vegetative mount of fat flesh… We can see by these short examples that this movie is actually a little bit mad, but that's exactly its most valuable feature! We can feel the irony since the first to the last minute of the movie, and its dark humour mixed with some gore scenes makes it a really dark comedy! It's almost unique by its madness since we can't find many movies with this kind of roughness. One in which we can find some similarity, about the dysfunctional family's feature, is probably "Amarcord", but there aren't too many we can compare to this one!
Brilliant
posted on 06 Aug 2007I'd like to give this 10 stars for sheer inventiveness and audacity not to mention a brilliant eye, but for me it didn't quite work totally as a film, falling apart slightly towards the end. That said I'd recommend doing whatever you have to to catch this film, it's certainly one of the most original offerings I've seen in a long while and hopefully it's only the second of many to come. Looking at the release dates, sadly it doesn't seem to be getting much exposure outside the festival circuit in many territories. Hopefully it will at least get a (well) publicized DVD release. Watching it caused me to seek out Hukkle (the first feature) and that proves easily that Taxidermia is certainly no fluke, Hungary is surely producing a major talent here.
Easily makes my top 10 films of the naughties!
posted on 08 May 2007Gyorgy Palfi's second feature Taxidermia is definitely a milestone in Hungarian film-making, it is a truly astonishing experience and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone wanting to broaden their taste for cinema. I found the film to be a deep black comedy with some stomach churning, twisted scenes intermixed with beautiful artwork and sophomore characters. Through chronicling the lives of three generations of one family (a soldier from the Second World War, a sportsman and a taxidermist) each is shown to have their own perverse and distorted lifestyle which is cleverly exhibited through (among other approaches), myriad masturbation, excessive gluttony, deformation, dismemberment and taxidermy. In this film Palfi has created a deviant and anomalous world and, via his own talented cinema techniques, has managed to depict it in a shrewdly reflective manner i.e. he holds a mirror up to our own. Those familiar with European cinema will be able to reminisce with the many influences on show, with some scenes even harking back to Pasolini's epic, Salo - this is also combined with many other surreal influences. Some would argue that Taxidermia is a gory, violent and unnecessarily eccentric film but it is all necessary in serving its narrative and is not present for titillation purposes - as is so often found in some of the more contemporary European cinema.Generally I feel that Taxidermia tells of a society in which defect, sleaze and dishonesty serves its creators own personal vision or goal to further themselves and that this search justifies everything, regardless of how twisted or harmful. In addition to this journey Taxidermia presents the audience with some of the ugliest and darkest places of the human mind. Without saying anymore, I would even go so far to say that Taxidermia is one of the greatest feats of 21st century movie-making.
A rare find!
posted on 28 Apr 2007Oh my god! I just got out from seeing Taxidermia at MIFF 2006 and I was literally speechless. As I was one of the first to leave the theatre, I took it upon myself to stand out the front and watch the expressions on the faces of other patrons as they exited. Most were laughing in disbelief at what they had just seen, some were white as ghosts and some looked plain baffled. Whatever way you look at it, Taxidermia will certainly make a strong impact on you. I saw Gyorgy Palfi's "Hukkle" a few years ago at MIFF and although that was an interesting film, he's really excelled himself with Taxidermia. One thing's for sure, you'll need a strong stomach to watch Taxidermia a) for the gore & b) cause you're gonna laugh your head off! Outstanding cinema! 10/10
Taxadermia
posted on 31 Mar 2007Many expat Hungarians were in the audience at the viewing I attended, probably thinking that they were going to see something on the order of "the history of taxidermy," or a movie that featured rooms in a museum full of trophy fowl. By mid-way through the first vomiting scene, these lovely cultured people were excusing themselves from their seats, never to return. They seemed to feel somewhat embarrassed, sharing a common nationality with the filmmaker. I tried, yes I tried, to find merit in this concoction, but the final scenes completely lost me with the grotesque makeup of a 300+lb. man, immobile, and having to rely on his son to remove the waste products from his continual and deliberate slothfulness. Just when I thought the son would show us some humanity by leaving his gross father and gloomy taxidermy shop, perhaps becoming a Hermes model or something meaningful like that, he ends it all by taxidermying himself! I realize he was rejected by the female grocery clerk repeatedly, but the loser kept retrieving his money from that pelt of a pouch he had made, leaving the tiny paws of his victim still attached. Now, seriously, THAT is a turn-off right there! Go and see it if you want, but I did warn you. P.S. There is no one in this movie that looks even remotely like Audrey Hepburn. The overweight are celebrated.
Big Disappointment
posted on 15 Mar 2007Taxidermia 3/10Taxidermia is by far the most disappointing film of the year, but then again maybe our anticipation and hopes were just to high. There's allot the hype going around about it being the most shocking film of all time (believe me it does not even come close) it does have it's sick and gross moments, (and it might be advised that the too squeamish pass on this one) but most people will just be bored. The film lacks action and any smart or meaningful dialogues, there is no political or social conscience or message, and it is simply not sick or shocking enough to truly qualify as an Exploitation film. Which is a shame because the film has the right settings to be politically meaningful and also the casting couldn't be more superb. finally bravo to the director of photography, who truly knows his work. For those who have no clue what the film is about; Taxidermia is the second full length film by Hungarian film-director György Pálfi (I have not seen his first film Hukkle) and is based on the short stories by Lajos Parti Nagy. It follows the lives of three Hungarian men (during fascism, communism and finally post soviet Hungary) the plot runs often thin and there are holes and unexplained lose ends in the tales. The first story is about Morosgoványi; a horny soldier who works and lives at the farm of his lieutenant. the film starts with him burning himself with a candle just before shooting fire out of his penis (most likely his fantasy as he ejaculates, believe me this guy does not make the appearance of having any magical powers) the middle aged soldier spends most of his days pleasuring himself (while looking at fairy tale books, cleaning bath tubs, or spying on the daughters of his lieutenant.) He finally even pokes away on a pig carcass, with bad consequences. The second story focuses on a fat speed eating champion who was born with a tail (and could either be the son of the lieutenant or the son of Morosgoványi; which it is not to clearly explained and therefore up to our imagination) and is by far the most boring story out of all three, his character stays undeveloped, we learn little about him, he just eats and pukes, finally he falls in love with a fat woman and together they have a child, so begins the third and last story, as the child grows up to be a skinny and kind of creepy Taxidermist, who lives alone with his now even fatter and bed ridden father and his large mutant cats. The end is the worst 'surprise ending' I have ever seen. Like said, it has it's few good and truly sick moments, I give it three stars (mainly for excellent cast and acting on most part) I'd really like to read the original stories to by Nagy to see if they are just as pointless or of the director just missed out on the meaning of it all. Salem K.
"Delicatessen" on steroids. Greenaway is a Teletubbie next to this...
posted on 17 Dec 2006The first part/story is about a soldier/peasant/whoever who gets erections looking at just about anything. He spies on peasant women bathing, and masturbates in his shed. Later on, he observes them clandestinely and lustily from his super-shed as they muck about in the snow. He notices a small hole in the wooden wall of the house and decides to stick his proud and filthy member inside it. The masturbation starts (or is it house-screwing? now there's a real intelligent philosophical dilemma that presents itself for all ye pompous/deluded film students). However, the poor schluck doesn't get very far with his sexual shenanigan because a rather bored but grim-looking rooster sees what looks like a worm-like animal to him, and pecks it very hard. (A rare funny moment.) The chronic masturbator emits a loud yowl.But there are more perversions! I've barely even started listing them. Our peasant is apparently also a pedophile, as we watch him lose himself in a fanciful fantasy world that involves a fairy-tale-like house and a girl barely 8 years old. Guess what happens next? Exactly: the peasant takes the girl's hand and tells her to "put it down there". Cut to Hare-Lippy inside his shed: he masturbates to this imagined girl, and the director is even kind enough to show us not only his erect penis but also the semen that shoots out of it - all the way towards the night-sky, towards one of Earth's nearest stars. (Proxima Centauri? Perhaps his semen will start off a whole new world/civilization of filthy-minded attention-seeking Hungarian directors there...) Was this Art? Symbolism? Alienation? A metaphor for something similarly stupid and irrelevant? Nah... Just a perverse Hungarian director who probably believes that porn is artistic and belongs in mainstream movies. No wonder, of course: Hungary is the Metropolis of Europe's porn industry, so I guess the least we can expect in any modern Hungarian movie is erections, vaginas, pedophilia, bestiality, etc. Oh, come on, we have to be open-minded about such things! The next scene shows the graphic depiction of the butchering of a pig. You might have guessed it already (as I had): our anti-hero is sexually drawn towards all of that freshly slaughtered bloody dripping flesh, so later that evening he decides to lie on what's left of the porker and - but what else? - fantasizes/masturbates to various peasant women who so constantly provoke him with their large breasts and happy smiling faces. At first it isn't entirely clear whether he is actually having (gasp!) normal sex with a consenting adult from the same species and of the opposite sex, because it appears as if the fat middle-aged woman is really there - making her moves on him. But then it becomes clear that it's yet another fantasy, i.e. that this movie's director would never stoop so low as to show us too much of sex between mere two humans (That'd be too square, right? After all, the director feels compelled to compete with Greenaway, Miike, and the like.) The next morning, the fat woman's husband enters the peasant's shed and blasts his head off with one clean shot to the head. The head dissolves into bits of flying debris, some of it perhaps hitting the camera-lens. Not sure about that one. Either way, the director had already managed to fulfill his Extreme Sex&Violence Quota - only 20 minutes into the movie. From here on, any further filth is merely a bonus for the movie's drooling fans.And more filth there is. What follows is that the fat woman gives birth to a baby-boy who has a ha-ha-funny anomaly attached to his derrière: a pig's tail. Daddy doesn't seem to be too keen on having a semi-porker for a child, so he rushes to get a pair of pliers and cuts off the piggy-tail with boredom almost, as if he'd been doing that sort of thing for years.Cut to around 20 years later; the second story begins. There is a food-stuffing competition going on, in what seems to be a satire of Communist lust for sports glory. One of the morbidly obese competitors we easily recognize as the baby boy from the previous scene, on account of the remnants of a small pig-tail still bulging out just beneath his lower back. We're somewhere in the early or mid-60s. The second part mostly ignores sexual deviation, but there's still plenty of vomiting and retarded behaviour as to please even the most jaded fans of so-called "shock-cinema". As our half-piggy hero lies in bed, his fiancée's very hairy armpit hangs over him, dripping sweat - right onto his face. He licks it off, having obviously been sexually stimulated by it. Later on, there is more competitive food-munching, some brief doggy-style sex, etc. It's all very stylishly shot, but quite unfunny and mostly infantile.The third story features Half-Piggy, much older and by now weighing around two tons, looking distinctly like a Euro-trash version of Jabba The Hutt. He is immobile, spending his time in a dark, depressing flat where he stuffs three large cats with food, and reminisces of his food-stuffing glory days. He is taken care of by his disappointingly skinny son, a taxidermist. In his spare time Junior flirts unsuccessfully with female cashiers and makes plans for turning himself into a stuffed statue. The film fittingly ends with its most disgusting, extreme, and absurd scene in which Junior taxidermizes himself into oblivion. His empty head gets lopped off, the right arm is severed, and some time later he is discovered by one of his customers who then proceeds to display this "work of art" in some trendy museum. He gives a philosophical speech about Junior, and this soliloquy is supposed to be very very "deep" and "meaningful". The End.
I want a stuffed animal
posted on 17 Dec 2006Taxidermia will shock, upset, disturb and make nauseous all but the most sturdy and unflappable cinema viewer. However, it will also make you laugh, smirk, and smile. It does the whole spectrum of emotions as you are taken from through three generations of a family with varying degrees of humanity and all with a similar obsessions over flesh (be it sexual, personal, that of others, etc).I cannot vouch that it will be a revelation to all, and some will see it as very base cinema, but I think you need to look beyond the excess, and take it with a pinch of salt.It is superb production, it is at the very height of tastefulness and tastelessness, but pulled together so effortlessly and seamlessly.More please!!!
Astonishingly original
posted on 05 Dec 2006I thought this was a true original and it made me break out in a sweat at certain points. Not many films have a physical effect on their audience.There were some astonishing moments and scene transitions that were literally breathtaking. I didn't believe the director had put certain things in to solely shock as some people have suggested. The film looks very lush in style and there were some stunning compositions. My favourite story was the final one with the sickly grandson of the original character. I am trying to source 'Hukkle' now as I want to see more by this director. I have not seen anything this interesting for some time. This film lingers in my mind.
Dark, ugly, surreal and twisted.
posted on 20 Oct 2006This movie follows three generations of some odd men in Hungary. The first is a sexually frustrated soldier in the second world war, who dreams sexually of his comrade's wife and kids. constantly masturbating and fantasizing ends up with a baby being born. The child grows up and ends up being a champion of speed-eating, he marries a woman (wich is also fat) and thus the next generation is born. A taxidermist.This is a movie about the ugliest places and human beings on earth. It plays around and explores this ugliness, and the result is a gross, twisted and extremely dark humorous movie, with a side of some surrealistic plot devices. The cinematography is excellent . Acting is all good, so no mistakes on that. Overall, this is a very well done movie, and the director shows talent. I'm looking forward to see more of his twisted movies.
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The beautifully disgusting side of humans, brought under the microscope by exceptional sound design and photography
posted on 27 Aug 2009Taxidermia is a beautiful film in many respects, and it never ceases to amaze me that this is only György Pálfi's second film. Having seen his first feature Hukkle previously, it is clear that Pálfi pays great attention to detail, and perhaps places the greatest importance on sound design. A great example of this would be the scene wherein Lajos (played by Marc Bischoff) extracts his own organs – the visceral image of each individual organ sliding out of the body becomes infinitely more repulsive accompanied by the appropriate Foley sounds, deliberately amplified to draw us closer to the 'action'. Amon Tobin's skulking score helps to identify the tone as dark and sinister.Though I haven't read Lajos Parti Nagy's short stories, the source material from which each character originates, I loved the theme of animalism and the deadly sins. Each member of the Balatony family seemed to exhibit the physical and spiritual traits of an animal – Morosgoványi as the lustful rabbit (compare his hare-lip), Kálmán as the gluttonous pig (complete with truncated tail), and Lajos as the vainglorious bird (his gaunt face also brings to mind the skull traditionally seen in vanitas paintings). Pálfi enriches this theme by having each character physically deconstruct real animals - Morosgoványi has sex in the corpse of a pig, Kálmán gorges on various animals, and Lajos stuffs animals for a living. As each man dies as a result of his sin, one could suggest that Pálfi is criticising man's hypocrisy for judging others without recognising his own flaws.