The container with the dimensions of 7x7 meters strikes you just as ugly as all the other garbage facilities but once inside it, you find yourself in a miniature Cannes-ish cinema. I’ve never done Cannes, but if I did and found something like this, I’d pretty much get the “eureka” feeling. 

Dusk, squishy and beige plush, velvety curtains. The movie screen is placed on the wall of the container in a way that it shows exactly the same view we’d see if it was a window: the good old Moszkva tér folks. A webcam conveys the images, so the world outside the container is almost live on the silver screen that lets you eye the passengers waiting for the tram, the book shop and the real-time tower clock on the pole top. The movie begins with the Big Bang and ends with the Big Boom, warped into 35 minutes.

The plot is striking and simple: what’s the meaning of life, where do we come from, where are we heading, etc? The answer is manifold but taken from the book entitled “Men are Beasts”. On Moszkva tér the animals called ‘Homo Sapiens’ are swarming to and fro like waves woven by the wind.  Time Square is just a habitat for these animals and so is the square in front of the Kremlin if the container happens to be there. The movie is directed to carry the very same message anytime, anyplace. Viewing the pigeons flying above the trams from the comfort of the squishy seats, you can discern not much of a difference between them and us. We’re faceless, meaningless and lacking in a purpose just like them. The Chinese woman narrating the story in her silky voice tells us how we’ve come, seen and are leaving. WE are just motes of dust. YOU all are insignificant, THEY are one out of a billion, IT lasts as long as a wink, YOU won’t be remembered, I don’t make much of a difference. The wording however omits to admit that that very wink is plenty good. Joy is as good as missing from the movie, just like the subway exit. If the webcam was positioned five centimeters to the right, it would be visible. Which I’d have been kind of interested in. Because the exit is so interesting. Joy is so poetic. And I believe this was meant to be poetry. And it is after all. Baudlaire dreamed of such things in 1860. Today Dries Verhoeven, Dutch director does, who sits the movie through with the audience because -as he said- he was curious, he also had no idea how it’d turn out. The difference between “A Beast” and The Large Movement is comparable to that between a quill pen and a webcam. Oopsie! I’m in it, too. I’m walking there along with the audience members. Sheesh, it’s awesome. It’s like my back is a bit curved but at least I appeared in the universe for a split second; on entering the container, I had been filmed unnoticed.