December 2023 blog post – East of Eden: Personal trauma, cultural trauma and trauma processing in Larry (2022)

Author: Farkas Boglárka

Introduction

Szilárd Bernáth’s first feature-length fictional film, Larry (2022), focuses on Ádám (Benett Vilmányi), a 21-year-old boy, who lives in the marginalized, eastern county of Hungary, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, and works as a shepherd. The boy struggles with heavy stuttering and lives with his middle-aged father, Zoltán (Szabolcs Thuróczy), who is a local policeman. Despite his stuttering, Ádám starts to rap in secret – choosing Larry as his stage name – and writes a song called East of Eden. Interestingly, during these rap sessions alone, he seems to leave behind his stuttering. The song retells Ádám’s personal trauma, revealing an abusive father and a mother, who committed suicide. Ádám befriends Csala Do (László “Csala Do” Onofer), a local Roma rapper and together they enter the song in a national talent show. Thanks to the success of the song, Ádám and Csala Do are invited to perform the song live, in Budapest, at the final stage of the talent show. Therefore, our title character’s main challenge will be to combat his anxieties and stuttering in order to give a great performance on the big day.

The title of Ádám’s song, East of Eden, deserves to be further discussed because this can also lead us to Bernáth’s storytelling technique. On one part, the title reminds us of John Steinbeck’s famous novel of the same name and the biblical story of Cain and Abel – Abel was a shepherd, too. On the other hand, these words were also used by a Hungarian rapper called Serrano, who competed at a national talent show in 2015, with a song titled The Poorest Region(Legszegényebb régió). In the lyrics of the song, Serrano says the following: “We remained here, forgotten, on the east of Eden, buried alive in the poorest region.” Serrano refers to the county of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, which is indeed, considered to be one of the poorest regions of Hungary. It’s not coincidental that Larry’s protagonist is also from this region and he also enters a similar competition as Serrano. Bernáth’s screenplay was heavily inspired by the real-life character of Serrano and even though his film is fictional, he chose to take real-life elements and real-life characters into it, thereby contributing to a social realist vision.

Confirming the film’s ambition to be as realistic as possible, the director of the film said the following during our research interview: 

“In many cases, we tried to mix reality and fiction. For example, the person who plays the loan officer in the film is a real-life loan officer, the religious community of the film is also a real, existing community and we shot one of their ceremonies as if we would have shot a documentary film. Csala Do’s character is really a rapper, his name is really Csala Do. The songs that we hear in the film are really his songs. He really works in Germany as a welder (…). It was important to have these little hints that tell us: this story takes place in the ‘here and now’ of Hungary (…).”

Excerpt from the research interview made with Szilárd Bernáth on the 14^th of June, 2023.

During our discussion, Bernáth also mentioned that the Budapest School had a great influence on him as a filmmaker. The Budapest School was a filmmaking movement in the 70s of Hungary, which was known for experimenting with the combination of fiction and documentary techniques, teasing the borders between reality and fiction. Based on the above-mentioned examples, we can see how this contemporary Hungarian film echoes these ideas of the Budapest School. Larry functions as a hybrid between real-life and fictional elements and this hybridity is visible in the casting, as well. In the film, there are professional actors (Benett Vilmányi, Szabolcs Thuróczy, Anna Szandtner) and unprofessional actors playing themselves (most predominantly Csala Do and his environment). The hybridity is also marked by Larry’s accentuated self-affirmation as a (sub)genre film, following the narrative patterns of the coming-of-age film, while also enhancing the film’s realism with multiple experts. For instance, Benedek Kovács was the speech therapist of the film, who helped Vilmányi to learn stuttering in credible way. Furthermore, Kriszta Bódis, a Hungarian documentary filmmaker and the creator of an important Roma integration programme (Van helyed!), helped the crew as a psycho-sociological expert, who also knows many people from the Roma community of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county. I argue that it is useful to emphasize the commitment of Bernáth’s film to realist tendencies because this realism is inherently attached to the way Larry reflects on personal and cultural trauma.

Personal Trauma

It was mentioned before that Ádám’s personal trauma is a family trauma, which is traceable in the father-son relationship of Ádám and Zoltán. There are no flashbacks in the film, nevertheless, the film does refer to a past event from Ádám’s childhood multiple times, during which his father beat up the son so badly that the incident is still visible on the boy’s scruff. As Cathy Caruth affirmed, “trauma is always the story of a wound that cries out” (Caruth, 1996) and it certainly seems that Larry offers a verbatim visual translation of this idea. In the second part of the film, Ádám becomes almost bald after a haircut, hereby accentuating the visibility of this wound. There are many shots in the film in which we follow Ádám from behind, always making sure that we are seeing not only him but also his trauma.

Furthermore, Peter Levine states that trauma is always “locked” in the body (Levine, 1992) and this impossibility of getting out or processing the trauma is once again very visible and audible in Larry through the motif of stuttering. Although stuttering can be caused by genetic and neurological factors, there is a consensus amongst the researchers of stuttering regarding that it can be the result of trauma. This is what they call traumatic stuttering. The ‘genesis’ of Ádám’s stuttering is only thematised once in the film, during a scene in which Noémi (Anna Szandtner) cuts the boy’s hair. Noémi asks Ádám when the stuttering started. Ádám says that he ‘learned’ from someone in the kindergarten. However, the viewer is rightfully suspicious regarding the truth of this story, because Ádám looks agitated, as if he’s trying to shroud a much darker truth.

The connection between personal trauma and stuttering allows Bernáth to audiovisually represent the development of trauma processing – both progress and stagnation – since Ádám’s internal events are also reflected by the presence and absence of stuttering. In the deeply metaphorical ‘language’ of Larry, where the psychological wound is indexed by the physical wound and the personal trauma is echoed in the motif of stuttering, it is not surprising that trauma processing will be associated with an activity in which continuous speech is an essential requirement. Here, rap is not merely a music genre, it is not just self-expression, but a method related to music therapy – even if Ádám and his environment do not contextualize it as such. According to Julie Sutton and Jos De Backer, “music therapy is particularly effective with patients who, because of their specific pathologies (…) lack the resources or motivations necessary for most forms of verbal psychotherapy” (Sutton & De Backer, 2009). Considering Ádám’s stuttering and financial situation, he is also in this aforementioned category. Intriguingly, Sutton and De Backer validate the usefulness of music therapy by arguing that through repetition, a tension will be created “that is in itself a compulsion to heal” (Sutton & De Backer, 2009). In Larry, Ádám repeats and rehearses one song only (East of Eden) in which he retells his personal trauma over and over again. On a note regarding the importance of the narrative in trauma processing, Le Roy et al. state that narrative is “a vital element in the difficult process of moving from the ‘denial’ and ‘acting-out’ to the ‘working-through’ of trauma” (Le Roy et al., 2011).

In the lyric of East of Eden, Ádám explicitly retells his traumatic experience with this abusive father, as these following bits show: “At dawn, he was suffocating me in the bathtub,” “I was on my knees in the corner, and then he hit me with a belt.” Furthermore, the fact that the son holds his father responsible – not only for the trauma of the abuse but the loss of his mother, too – is accentuated in these agitated lines: “Can you really still look me in the eye after that?” “Mom quit because of you, yeah, try to remember that!” The lyric also includes a very asserting line – “I cannot bear if the father’s arm hurts.” The trauma literature never fails to emphasize the crucial moment in trauma processing in which the traumatised person is transformed from victim to survivor. Arguably, Ádám does something similar with the help of this line, as he declares that he will no longer put up with an abusive father. As a child, he is the victim of the traumatic event, but as an adult – a ‘real’ adult (a status that will be achieved at the climax of the coming-of-age narrative) – he is no longer a victim but a survivor.

Cultural Trauma

The lyric of East of Eden, alongside personal trauma, makes references to a much broader cultural trauma, as well. The lines that tell us about an “infectious environment” and a collective accusation (“you made me this way”) reveal that in this trauma, there are multiple victims and faceless perpetrators. According to the definition of Jeffrey C. Alexander, “(c)ultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways” (Alexander, 2012). Furthermore, Alexander points out that cultural trauma is constructed by society – it does not occur simply because there has been a traumatic (collective) experience. This process of construction is characterized by cultural representations – that underpin the harmful effects of a certain event on the collective identity – and by the presence of the carrier groups, who function as the “meaning makers” of cultural traumas. Connected to this idea, Le Roy et al. write about the paradox of cultural traumas, how “(c)ultural trauma triggers a ‘crisis of representation’ in the sense that it disturbs the shared imaginations and representations upon which collective identities are based, while at the same time the trauma itself is undeniably an important part (and sometimes the most important part) of that identity” (Le Roy et al., 2011).

But what kind of cultural trauma is displayed in Larry? In socialist-era Hungary, the county of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén was called the “Sajómenti Ruhr-vidék” (Ruhr region of the Sajó valley), because of the strong industrialisation of the region, especially in metallurgy, mining and engineering, which started in the 1950s. According to György Kocziszky, the decline of this industry region already started in the mid-1980s (Kocziszky, 2001), however, the most drastic changes in the region were caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advent of the market economy. The factories that were built up during the socialist era ceased to exist in the new capitalist era and everything that has been produced in the region suddenly became invaluable due to the emergence of the global, capitalist economy. Therefore, by the early 90s, the region was subjected to serious economic crises and as a consequence, many people lost their (previously stable) jobs. The county became much more peripheral than ever before and the population entered a vicious cycle marked by unemployment, poverty, addiction and a general distrust towards public institutions. It is also important to note that Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county – among other northeast counties – has a large Roma population and the events of this transition period had a negative impact on the Roma people, as well, setting back their integration and intensifying their segregation.

Larry – as the director says in our research interview – could not be perceived as a Borsod county tableau (because the film focuses mainly on its protagonist), nevertheless, Bernáth’s film still manages to tackle the cultural trauma of the region. The neglected spaces of the film, which are stuck in the past, the side story of the bankrupt factory that refuses to give its workers severance pay, Csala Do and his possible emigration to Germany, the tension between the countryside as the periphery and Budapest as the centre – all these elements reflect on the cultural trauma of this region. In this respect, Larry’s social realism and the film’s willingness to occasionally explore participatory filmmaking are highly relevant. The real-life Roma rapper, Csala Do was involved in the dialogue writing (making the lines more authentic), while the other Roma characters were affecting the scenes through improvisation. There are scenes, which are very documentary-like not only because of the camerawork but also because it seems that in these cases, Roma people were in charge of these scenes, they dominated the unfolding of the events.

Based on Jeffrey C. Alexander’s ideas, we might even say that the carrier group of the county’s cultural trauma (to some extent) is made up of the rappers of this region, who articulate the wounds of their collective identity through outspoken lyrics. In the lyrics of Serrano and Larry, we see social pain and we see attempts for social impeachment. The perpetrators in these lyrics are nameless, even bodiless and most importantly the perpetrators are those in power, who neglected this region. Once again returning to the lyrics of East of Eden, it is also interesting that the distrust in police institutions – which is a very common motif in rap from North America to Eastern Europe – gets a deeper meaning in Larry, since Ádám’s abusive father is also a policeman. These lines thus suggest that Ádám – hiding behind a well-known rap topic – is essentially talking about his father even in these lines, which seem to tackle only police institutions.

Conclusion

We have seen that in Larry, personal and cultural trauma go hand in hand, reinforcing each other in Bernáth’s film. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that trauma processing can only be discussed in the context of personal trauma, while Borsod’s cultural trauma is (deliberately) left open and unresolved at the end of the film. In Ádám’s life, self-expression and music have a therapeutic character, because rap allows him to tell his trauma narrative and ultimately rap enables him to confront his stutter and his oppressive father. Thus, when the traumatic event of his childhood is repeated in the present, he is no longer a victim, even though his father is drinking again and beats him up again. During our research interview, the director articulates Ádám’s triumph with the following, imagined inner monologue of the character: 

“Now the punches don’t go deep, they don’t hurt this time – they don’t cause traumatic experiences anymore. All I can see now is the misery and the wretchedness of my father.”

Excerpt from the research interview made with Szilárd Bernáth on the 14^th of June, 2023.

As a closing remark, I’d argue that Larry is not particular in the sense that in contemporary Hungarian cinema (especially in documentaries) there is a tendency marked by the association of trauma and trauma processing with art therapy. The Euphoria of Being (A létezés eufóriája, Réka Szabó, 2019) addresses the cultural trauma of the Holocaust through a therapeutic dance performance, Return to Epipo (Visszatérés Epipóba, Judit Oláh, 2020) addresses a group trauma (the acts of a paedophile) through drama therapy, while Tales from the Prison Cell (Mesék a zárkából, Ábel Visky, 2020) addresses multiple family traumas through fairy tale therapy. All these examples suggest that the methods of art therapy can be very helpful, both in the cases of personal and cultural trauma.

[This blog post is partially based on the author’s Hungarian-written conference paper, which was presented at the Annual Conference of the Hungarian Film Studies Association in Eger, Hungary, on the 3^rd of November, 2023]

References:

• Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2012. Trauma: A Social Theory. UK: Polity Press.
• Bernáth, Szilárd. Research Interview. Conducted by Boglárka Angéla Farkas. June 14, 2023.
• Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed experience – Trauma, narrative and history. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• György, Kocziszky. 2001. Gondolatok Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén megye gazdasági helyzetéről az ezredfordulón. In Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén megye kistérségeinek jelene és jövője az ezredfordulón, eds. Kocziszky György, Lórántné Orosz Edit, 5-9, s.n.: Miskolc.
• Le Roy, Frederik; Stalpaert, Christel & Verdoodt, Sofie. 2011. Introduction. Performing Cultural Trauma in Theatre and Film. Between Representation and Experience. Arcadia – International Journal for Literary Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, April 2011, 249-264.
• Levine, Peter. 1992. The body as healer: Transforming trauma and anxiety. Lyons, CO: Author.
• Sutton, Julie & De Backer, Joe. 2009. Music, trauma and silence: The State of the Art. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 36 (2009), 75-83.