After
seven decades, Hungary is finally starting to come to terms with its WWII-era
history through cinema. It certainly didn’t happen during the Communist regime.
Granted, there was an occasional film here and there, but the reckoning started
in earnest during the 2000s. For their efforts, Hungarian filmmakers garnered
an Academy Award for Son of Saul and
a nomination for The Notebook. Unlike
those films, the atrocities have finally ceased when this Magyar exploration of
national culpability begins. Only guilt remains in Ferenc Török’s 1945 (trailer here), which opens this
Wednesday in New York.
In
a provincial village like this, everyone knows everybody’s business. That also
means they know who denounced who—and who profited by it. When the elderly
Hermann Samuel and his grown son arrive with two coffin shaped boxes, nearly
every villager assumes they are heirs or agents of the town’s deported (and
presumed dead) Jewish citizens. Naturally, their property was subsequently
divided up by their former neighbors, particularly Istvan Szentes the town
clerk and “Bandi” Kustar the town drunk.
The
arrival of the Jewish strangers is especially awkward for Szentes, because this
is his milk-toast son’s wedding day to the pretty country girl Kisrozsi. Their
union would solidify his campaign for social position. However, the appearance
of the mysterious Jewish men and Kisrozsi’s unabated attraction to her former
lover, Jancsi, the village Communist who returned in triumph, could potentially
complicate matters.
Essentially,
there are two sides to 1945. When
following the Samuels, the film has a stark, almost ceremonial tone. Yet, when
it shifts its focus to the grubby, grasping villagers, there is a marked spirit
of fatalism. Clearly, the mean-spirited Jancsi, who lords his camaraderie with
the occupying Soviets over the village, is not any worthier of Kisrozsi’s
affections than the socially awkward Arpad Szentes, perhaps even less so.
Indeed, there is good reason to believe there are hard times ahead for both the
bourgeoisie Sventes family and Kisrozsi’s land-owning peasant (kulak) clan. Török
vividly conveys the deceptively calm and tensely uncertain tenor of those times,
while witheringly exposing the town’s individual and collective guilt.
Despite
all his character’s faults, there is something deeply compelling about Peter
Rudolf’s portrayal of Istvan Szentes as a man who sold his soul, but might not
be allowed to fully reap the expected benefits. Likewise, Dora Sztarenki is
quite poignant as Kisrozsi, who has come to question her own Faustian bargain.
Yet, the film is dominated by the images of the two mourners silently following
their grim cargo to the cemetery. Török’s late co-producer Ivan Angelus is
especially haunting as the elder Samuel.
