THE STORY – “With great power comes great responsibility” — but what if the hero is just a hen? Escaping from a chicken farm, she finds refuge in the courtyard of a crumbling restaurant. There, she discovers love, confronts the pecking order, and fights to protect her eggs from a greedy owner. Her droll yet touching quest for motherhood mirrors the messy compromises and silent struggles of human lives.
THE CAST – Ioannis Kokiasmenos, Maria Diakopanagioti & Argyris Pantazaras
THE TEAM – György Pálfi (Director/Writer) & Ruttkay Zsófi (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 98 Minutes
Modern-day cinema has been plagued by the use of CGI animals in place of real critters. There are plenty of obvious reasons, from reducing the headachey logistics of working with a non-human actor to eliminating any concern for animals’ safety. But even with those valid arguments, nothing beats a real animal performer used effectively. A well-trained dog or camera-loving cat is a special effect in its own right. With “Hen,” György Pálfi sets out to do something even more impressive than having a typical household pet as a supporting player. His film centers entirely around a black-feathered hen, letting the audience see the world through her avian perspective, and for his leading lady, he cast eight identical, real-life hens to carry the film. A wonder of filmmaking ingenuity, “Hen” uses its supposedly simple-minded protagonist as a window to the world. Pálfi lets audiences watch the human conflicts and tragedies around the titular bird with a remove that allows for something like a philosophical reckoning on why we humans love to do things that seem to go against the simple balancing laws of nature.
From the start, Pálfi spotlights this clash. The very first image we see is an extreme close-up of an egg being laid. And immediately following this most biological and natural of functions, the eggs and, eventually, the chicks that hatch from them are tossed into the literal machinery of humanity’s attempted dominance of nature. The chicks slip and slide through funnels and on conveyor belts as they’re sorted, then efficiently packed and shipped off to farms. In that way, “Hen” establishes itself as a story of man vs. nature, but from nature’s point of view. This quiet conflict runs throughout the film in both small ways, like the Hen trying to enter a store through an automatic sliding door, and big ones, such as later in the film when the inconvenient spot where the Hen lays an egg has unexpectedly disastrous results. Pálfi never overemphasizes his thematic point, instead letting the Hen’s unfeeling – but not emotionless – reactions to everything around her serve as a reminder to the audience that we high and mighty humans are, in the grand scheme of things, still subservient to the uncaring whims of the natural world.
Even though she doesn’t speak, the Hen communicates her instinct-driven reactions to the audience. Thanks to Pálfi’s smart approach and Réka Lemhényi’s editing, the film maintains consistent clarity about what the Hen is thinking. For example, in an early scene in which she escapes from the truck of a man who intends to let his wife make the Hen into a soup, our feathered protagonist looks to the truck as it pulls away and we hear her make a clucking sound that can easily be read as something like sadness or worry. Throughout the film, it’s truly amazing what Pálfi is able to convey to the audience about the Hen’s headspace. The filmmaker gets incredible mileage out of simply shooting her unblinking eyes and slightly open beak. That expression can be read in so many ways, and Pálfi expertly uses classic film craft to guide the audience’s interpretation from scene to scene.
Cannes famously has the Palm Dog Award, given to the canine who made the greatest impact on festival attendees. If a similar award existed for bird performers (The Golden Gobble?), the eight hens who play the singular lead of “Hen” would easily strut up to the stage to collect their trophy. Of course, as with any animal actor, the director and his team of craftspeople must be credited with shaping the actions of the creature into something resembling a typical, emotion-driven performance. But looked at frame-by-frame, the things that these hens do and how they do them are simply extraordinary. Not only are they clearly comfortable in front of the camera, but they consistently hit their marks in surprisingly complicated takes. And the Hen’s comedic timing – with assistance from the editing – is spectacular; because of the situations she finds herself in and the clownish manner in which she moves through them, she’s basically Charlie Chaplin with feathers. If for no other reason, film lovers should check out “Hen” to see how it expands the very idea of what a central character can be and how the camera can capture them.
Giorgos Karvelas’s cinematography is handsome throughout. Of course, the filming of the live chicken is a feat on its own, but the natural landscapes of the Greek countryside are photographed with as much loving attention as is given to our main Hen. And although it would be easy to keep the camera ground-level and close to the Hen, Karvelas places and moves the camera in unexpected spots and ways, finding variety in his shots and switching up his shooting styles.
For nearly the entire first half of the film, the narrative is fairly light as we follow the Hen on her aimless journey of everyday survival. Eventually, she gets adopted into a family who – as is organically revealed – is working within a criminal enterprise. Of course, our Hen doesn’t judge them for doing so, although introducing these characters swiftly shifts the film’s tone from comic and charming to something much more troubling as the details of their practices come to light. This shift in the film’s energy momentarily destabilizes it, though it could be argued that it reflects how quickly Hen must shift from simply existing to fighting to survive in response to a sudden change in her situation.
“Hen” is a milestone in filmmaking, stretching the possibilities of storytelling with its unique perspective. In an age when so many would-be marvels in movies can be dismissed as merely a creation of CGI or – horror of horrors – AI, György Pálfi’s film manages to find new ways to surprise, shock, and bewilder its audience (so much so that I kept an eye out for the “no animals were harmed” message in the film’s credits, and yes, it’s there). Simple in concept but rich in meaning, it’s a magic trick of a film that powerfully allows viewers to walk a mile in its main character’s talons.
