'Iska's Journey' from one hell to another

By Samuel Gaytan
Houston Chronicle

"Iska's Journey" captures the best of the human spirit and the worst in humanity. Director Csaba Bollók's film opens in a dark Romanian slag heap where children collect scrap metal to try to survive. Young Iska's red sleeves are the only bright color breaking the bleakness.

When she fails to bring home money because she's been cheated by the scrap buyer, she's beaten by her alcoholic mother. Each scream feels like one more step in the murder of her soul.

But Iska is a survivor. Whether collecting metal scraps, bottles or leftover food from a miners' canteen, she never gives up the will to survive.

She wanders the streets, walking into a church and asking, "Are you there, Father?" She tries taking money from the poor box, failing, before stepping into the confessional where she meets a stranger who later will take her from a slag heap where she is sleeping to an institute, where she will be united with her dying, 12-year-old younger sister.

Both look like boys, with their hair cut short by Iska's stepfather, perhaps in an attempt to keep nits or predators away, or perhaps simply as abuse.

The institute offers her the chance to learn how to play for the first time. When asked by an adult whether they are playing for money, the children reply no, they are playing for punishment. They accept their fate unquestionably, watching as a boy is taken away, perhaps for adoption, perhaps for something else, and Iska's main concern is why they don't take girls.

She never ends her search for self-worth. "How much money did you get for me?" she asks a woman at the institute. When told nothing, she asks, "Am I worth less than a bottle?"

When her mother comes looking for her, Iska leaves with her, but the ill daughter is left behind. Iska's love for her family and her trust in adults will lead her on a path away from the better life she might have had.

Young Mária Varga's performance as Iska is reason enough to watch the movie.

When a boy who has a crush on Iska asks her to a fair so he can win her a heart, she asks him, "Are you stupid?" But the look she gives him shows hope still lives.

Even on a boat full of women heading to an unknown destination and futures as sex slaves, Iska's need to care for others survives. When one of them is taken away, Iska alone asks if she and the other women should go help her. The other women joke about the situation, accepting it, knowing any one of them could be next. Only "the papers" they might get matter.

After Iska finds the woman and looks into her eyes as she is being raped, her expression transforms from horror to acceptance. Despite the evils she has seen, she is still an innocent, sitting next to the victim afterward and asking her: "Is this a luxury liner?"

The film flows smoothly, evenly, despite the terrible things Iska encounters, as though to say the day-to-day disappointments and pain the characters encounter are nothing unusual.

They survive. Iska finds moments of happiness where she can: a loaf of bread, a handful of stolen grapes, dancing to the music of a street musician.

The stripped down, yet beautiful, score seamlessly melds with the perfectly filmed dark landscape populated by a poor, devastated people simply trying to make it to another day.