Hadik, on Klassiki

Field Marshal Andras Hadik is a Hungarian national hero, who loyally served Maria Theresa, the Queen of Hungary. She also happened to be the Habsburg Holy Roman Empress. That could make things complicated, especially when he was expected to fight alongside Saxons, whom his honorable Hussars essentially considered scurvy dogs. They could agree on fighting Prussians, which is exactly what they did when the Field Marshal led a daring raid on Berlin, dramatized in Janos Szikora’s Hadik, which premieres today on Klassiki.

Hadik was so competent and successful, nearly the entire court and war council was aligned against him. The only exception was Maria Theresa, because he was talented. After an ignoble defeat Hadik nearly averted, jealous generals tried to scapegoat the famous Hussar, but Maria Theresa would not have that for long. Soon, she recalls Hadik to service, because she knows he is the only officer who can accomplish her daring mission.

Having received intel regarding Prussian troop movements, Maria Theresa realizes Frederick the Great left Berlin dangerously under-defended. Ransoming Berlin would be a huge coup, but all the court dandies are too timid to grasp the moment. Hadik gets it—and hatches plans to accomplish it.

Hadik will lead his Hussars and the Saxons Maria Theresa forces him to take, for political reasons, over the mountains, sort of like Hannibal. They cannot carry artillery, so they will plunder cannons from Frederick’s munitions factory along the way. It is a huge gamble, but Hadik’s Hussars will follow him anywhere. However, Saxon Colonel Ried constantly demands their pay.

Szikora’s approach is definitely traditional, but that is generally refreshing. Mark Kis-Szabo’s screenplay is certainly patriotic, but there is sufficient intrigue swirling around Maria Theresa so that it never feels like jingoistic propaganda for Orban’s authoritarian ambitions. If anything, it encourages skepticism of royals and nobility.

That said, Hadik is certainly presented as a paragon, but Zsolt Trill largely humanizes the Field Marshal by emphasizing his love for his family and desire to retire to a quieter life. We also see his ardent loyalty to his comrades-in-arms, particularly crusty old Farkas and their protégé, roguishly dashing Gvadanyi. Indeed, one of the best aspects of the film is the way Trill, Tamas Szalma, and Aron Molnar capture the three Hussars’ comradery.

Fantaspoa ’24: Mastergame

“B” is the sort of film character Garry Kasparov would probably approve of, and possibly relate to, as both a chess master and a human rights activist. Arrested during the Soviet crackdown on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Catholic priest is being held in conditions of extreme mental and physical isolation. His only distraction is a slim book about chess. If that sounds familiar, it is because this film is also based on Stefan Zweig’s novella, “The Royal Game,” just like Philipp Stolzl’s recent Chess Story. However, Barnabas Toth takes Zweig’s themes in a very David Lynchian direction, while revisiting Hungary’s traumatic Communist history in Mastergame, which screens during this year’s Fantaspoa in Porto Alegre.

Istvan and Marta are two young anti-Communist lovers desperately trying to leave Hungary, before the Soviets seal the borders. Normally, you want to be on the “last train out,” no matter the cost, but there is something ominous about this train, beyond its Casablanca like collection of former revolutionaries, Communist spies, and petty criminals. A mild-mannered priest is also aboard (who maybe not so coincidentally bears some resemblance to Cardinal Mindszenty).

The priest is only referred to as “B” during the interrogations that make up Mastergame’s other timeline. According to his file, B withstood extraordinary physical torture while he was a prisoner of the Nazis, so they opt for different methods. They forbid the deeply humanistic cleric any human contact, even hiding the faces of his captors. His interrogator wants to break his spirit by severing his connection to humanity. However, the chance discovery of the chess book gives him something to occupy his mind.

If you know Chess Story or “The Royal Game,” you have a good idea of what is really going on, but the addition of the Marta-Istvan subplot adds an intriguing new dimension. In terms of tone, Mastergame feels very much like vintage Lynch ostensibly working in the mystery genre, as in Mulholland Drive. In fact, the skullduggery on the train is so well executed, Mastergame will be keenly suspenseful, even for the world’s greatest authority on Zweig. On top of that, setting the story amid the Hungarian Revolution adds a greater sense of grand historical tragedy.

CIFF ’24: White Plastic Sky

The residennts of 2123 Budapest survive thanks to what you might consider vegan Soylent Green. It is grown from trees, but it is still made of people. At least they get twenty more years than the 30-year-olds in Logan’s Run before they must surrender to Dr. Janos Paulik’s revolutionary hybrid-agricultural process. As a psychologist, Stefan Kovacs regularly attends to grieving patients, who resent losing loved ones during the prime of their lives. However, he cannot console himself when his wife Nora Kallay voluntarily sacrifices herself at the premature age of thirty-two. Despite the risks to his career and the social order, Kovacs intends to reverse the process and save his wife in Tibor Banoczki & Sarolta Szabo’s White Plastic Sky, which screens during the 2024 Cleveland International Film Festival.

Fertility is low in the future, so when Kallay and Kovacs lost their young son, it was a devastating blow that she never recovered from. He knew she was hurting, but he never thought she would volunteer. Since he is four years her junior, he should have plenty of time to start over, but instead, he hatches a rescue plan (even though she probably does not want to be rescued).

With information provided by his brother Mark, who was once a security officer in the human “plantation” outside the domed city of Budapest, Kovacs acquires forged work orders to perform psych evaluations of the staff. He suspects the somewhat rebellious Dr. Madu (who happens to be pushing fifty) will be willing to help and he assumes she can perform the reversal operation. Unfortunately, he is only half right. The plantation lacks adequate facilities for an operation, but her old mentor, Paulik, could perform the reversal in his secret research facility in the Slovakian mountainside.

White Plastic Sky is the best looking post-apocalyptic film in decades. It might not have much competition, but it is, nonetheless. The domed urban centers, ruined cities, and Paulik’s Bond-villain-worthy eagle’s nest installation represent some of the best science fiction art-for-film since Chesley Bonestell’s heyday. The rotoscoped figure-animation is also quite effective. Banoczki & Szabo’s narrative is not exactly unprecedented, but they instill it with a fable-like vibe that is quite arresting.

The Perfect Murderer, on Eurochannel

Kamenar is a homicide detective with a death wish. Even after a lifetime dealing with death, he was unprepared when it came for his family. This case might finally kill him, or possibly lead him towards redemption when he finds himself protecting his late daughter’s estranged friend in Jozsef Pacskovszky’s The Perfect Murderer, which premieres tomorrow on Eurochannel.

Both Kamenar and his wife have essentially given up on life. He is daring every criminal in Budapest to kill him, whereas she is about to enter a convent. Much to his surprise, he discovers his daughter’s former bestie Petra is the prime suspect in a murder. CCTV has her entering the luxury flat before the murder and exiting after, which is a bad look for her. Indeed, his colleague refers to her as, you know, “the perfect murderer.” However, he soon discovers another deleted access to the security system.

For a while, it looks like Kamenar might just keep Petra a captive in his “new” bachelor pad. Yet, he will become her protector when parts of her story check out. In fact, she most likely scratched the real killer, who is presumably out to get them both. He will need someplace secure to hide her, like a nunnery.

Perfect Murderer looks and sounds like it has the makings of a fiendishly twisty thriller, but the ho-hum plotting is predictable and the execution is rather flat. It is easy to guess who the surprise villain is, due to the small cast of characters and Mr. X’s conspicuously weird behavior. Perhaps his predatory pursuit of his implied sexuality also possibly says something about Orban’s Hungary.

By far, the best thing Perfect Murderer has going for it is craggy Zsolt Laszlo’s incredibly hard-nosed performance as Kamenar. He is all grizzled gristle, but, somehow, he makes it believable when Kamenar becomes Petra’s guardian angel. Nora Horich is a convincing hot-mess as the endangered witness. Plus, Gyozo Szabo also adds rumpled grit as Kamenar’s schlubby but possibly dangerous rival, Szabo Ormos.

Those Who Remained, Oscar Shortlisted Post-War Hungary

Do not tell the new Hungarian Communist regime: “it takes village to raise a child.” Everything is now the state’s business, but it could not care any less about a lonely teen Holocaust survivor like Klara Wiener. Her great-aunt Olgi is all she has left, but the middle-aged woman is ill-equipped to handle a rebellious teenager. Their emotionally frozen doctor seems even more poorly suited to foster-parenting, but their common experiences help him bond with her in Barnabas Toth’s Those Who Remained (shortlisted for the Best International Film Oscar as part of the Parasite class), which opens Friday in Los Angeles (and is now playing in New York).

Puberty is coming late for Wiener, but that hardly shocks Dr. Aladar “Aldo” Korner, Olgi’s gynecologist, considering the trauma she suffered. He knows his wife and child perished in the camps, whereas Wiener still clings to false hopes. Given their shared grief and survivor’s guilt, Aladar starts taking an interest in her, which blossoms into an unofficial foster-parent relationship, with Olgi’s blessing.

That all sounds like a super-cute Full House-ish arrangement, but the Party apparatchiks at Wiener’s school do not necessarily see it that way. Korner is especially vulnerable to their slanders, because the Party has marked him as a person of suspicion. He knows that for a fact, because one of his colleagues tells him he was expressly ordered to inform on him.

Despite the incredibly heavy subject matter (Holocaust survival and Communist oppression), Those Who Remained is very personal in scope and surprisingly touching. It is literally about several highly damaged people coming together as an ad-hoc extended family. Even Olgi lost her closest loved ones during the war and finds solace with Wiener and Korner. Of course, the greatest obstacle to their healing is the Party.

Karoly Hajduk is quietly devastating as Korner, convincingly portraying his emotional re-awakening, like a Hungarian Silas Marner, except, under Communism, caring for someone again sometimes places them in jeopardy. Abigel Szoke is also completely convincing as Wiener, showing how the teen matures greatly over the course of the film. Even relatively smaller supporting parts make a powerful impact, especially Katalin Simko, as Erzsi, a patient of Korner’s, with an equally tragic backstory, who could also become something more to the doctor.

Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, on OVID.tv

Budapest is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, whereas New Jersey is New Jersey. Yet, apparently, the Garden State is still a preferable place to practice neurosurgery, because of the superior equipment and working conditions. Nevertheless, Dr. Marta Vizy moves back to her native Hungary, to pursue a relationship with her lover, fellow neurosurgeon Janos Drexler. However, Dr. Drexler claims to have no memory of Vizy in Lili Horvat’s Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, which premieres tomorrow on OVID.tv.

As soon as she arrived, Vizy was supposed to meet Drexler at the Pest side of the Szechenyi Chain Bridge, but he no-shows. Of course, they were too passionate to do anything mundane, like exchange numbers, but she quickly tracks him down at the university hospital. When he denies all memory of her, it cuts the ground out from under Vizy’s feet—almost literally. She nearly returns to America, but instead, she stays, joining the staff of the hospital, where Drexler now only occasionally consults. Not surprisingly, the Budapest neurosurgery community is rather small, so their paths soon cross professionally. At first, it is understandably awkward, but it becomes increasingly less so over time, in hard to define ways.

Some descriptions suggest PTBTFAUPOT is some kind of noir thriller in the Cornell Woolrich tradition, but Horvat decidedly does not take the film in that direction. The periodic scenes of Vizy analyzing her situation during counseling sessions might suggest a Joanne Woodward-style mental heath awareness drama, but Horvat’s approach is too subtle and refined to serve as a mere PSA. Instead, she leans into ambiguity and takes inspiration from her characters’ vocation, inviting viewers to embrace our absolute inability to know another person’s mind.

That can be frustrating, but Horvat’s artistry is impressive. Robert Maly’s cinematographer is striking and the classical soundtrack gives the film a refined vibe, not unlike some of the finest films from Claude Sautet. Horvat often deliberately keeps viewers at arm’s length, but her style keeps us watching.

Marcell Jankovics’ Son of the White Mare

If Peter Max had painted Conan book covers instead of Frank Franzetta, they might have looked a lot like this film. They also would have confused the target audience. Marcell Jankovics set out to adapt several Magyar, Scythian, and Avarian folk myths, but the demands of Hungarian censors forced him to make strange alterations long the way. Yet, the resulting film was one of the most singularly auteurist animated film of its era. Its trippiness remains undiminished, as viewers can see when Marcell Jankovics’ newly restored Son of the White Mare opens virtually this Friday.

Technically, Fanyuvo (who will become known as “Tree-Shaker”) is the third son of the White Mare. As in Greek mythology, we probably really should not dwell on the implied human-animal interactions in this world. We do know Tree-Shaker gained his tree-shaking strength for his mother’s milk. After her death, Tree-Shaker sets off on a quest, like any reputable fantasy hero, to defeat three dragons, who are holding three Princesses captive in the underworld.

To help him, Tree-Shaker recruits two brawny sworn-brothers, Stone-Crumbler and Irontemperer. However, Tree-Shaker does most of the heavy lifting. Frankly, Crumbler and Temperer fail him at an alarming rate, but on the other hand, they sullenly put up with show-off behavior (they even endure weird spanking scenes).

White Mare is the sort of film that can never be fairly represented in synopsis form. You really have to see it to get it. It is much more about Jankovics’ swirling colors than the narrative blow-by-blow. Visually, it is indeed a trip. Frankly, it is rather surprising the Communist censors allowed so much openly sexual imagery, including the topless Princesses. There is also an awful lot of symbolism to unpack, especially if you are up on your Slavic folklore.

Curtiz: The Man Behind Casablanca

It was banned in neutral Ireland, because it portrayed the National Socialists and the Vichy collaborators unfavorably, but for the rest of the world, Casablanca was an instant classic. It spawned two very short-lived TV series adaptations, but no filmmaker has dared remake such an iconic film. However, success was far from certain during its hectic production. Jewish-Hungarian émigré Michael Curtiz wrestles with his personal demons and interference from multiple quarters as he struggles to complete the beloved movie in Tamas Yvan Topolanszky’s mostly English-language Hungarian film Curtiz, which starts streaming today on Netflix.

Curtiz was born Mano Kaminer in Budapest, but he Hungarianized his name to Mihaly Kertesz and then anglicized it to Michael Curtiz when he arrived in America. When he started directing films for Warner Brothers, he already had a reputation as a master filmmaker from his European work—which his ego and casting couch proclivities reflected.

Casablanca is one of about a dozen films in-production on the Warner lot, but it is the only film the Office of War Information is interested in. That means Curtiz must endure constant demands and feedback from Mr. Johnson, a government bureaucrat consulting on the project. Jack Warner makes it pretty clear Curtiz is on his own, but he is still expected to make another hit. To further complicate matters, the director’s estranged daughter Kitty has taken a studio job as a way of worming her way back into his life. Curtiz and the screenwriters Philip & Julius Epstein cannot even settle on a decent ending. His only ally on the production is legendary producer Hal B. Wallis, but Curtiz does his best to alienate him with his diva-like behavior.

Topolanszky and co-screenwriter Zsuzsanna Bak rather shrewdly chose which of the Hollywood legends associated with Casablanca to portray on film and which to only show in shadows or out of focus. Both Jozsef Gyabronka and Christopher Krieg are really terrific as S.Z. Sakall (Curtiz’s fellow Hungarian émigré, who played Carl) and Conrad Veidt (who played Maj. Strasser), respectively. Frankly, Krieg’s turn as Veidt might just change the way you see Casablanca, which is meant as a very high compliment. The only other cast-member who gets legitimate screen time in Curtiz is Oscar Reyes portraying Dooley Wilson, but he is not much of a factor in the behind-the-scenes story.

The rest of the ensemble is also quite strong, fortunately including Ferenc Lengyel, who is appropriately imperious yet complex as the man himself. Scott Alexander Young’s Wallis also gives the film a conscious and a dry wit. Declan Hannigan similarly deserves credit for humanizing Johnson, at least until Topolanszky & Bak suddenly and problematically decide to dehumanize in an ill-advised narrative left-turn.

Fantaspoa ’19: His Master’s Voice

There is something about the work of Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem that inspires more ambiguous and open-to-interpretation adaptations than the original source novels. Tarkovsky’s Solaris is a classic case, but Ari Folman’s The Congress was no slouch. Neither is this. Gyorgy Palfi offers a Twenty-First Century re-imagined, sequelistic vision of Lem’s classic Cold War-era novella with His Master’s Voice, which screens today at this year's Fantaspoa in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Like many Lem novels, Voice is a first contact story—sort of, but perhaps less so this time around. Regardless, Peter Horvath’s father left dark, dreary Socialist Hungary in 1981 to study a gamma ray phenomenon in America that he became convinced was a signal from space—and he just stayed. Unlike his mother and disadvantaged brother Zsolt, Horvath never really blamed him that much, but he always had a sinking feeling his father really shouldered some of the guilt for three notorious explosions that rocked Colorado (remember, it was gamma rays that created the Incredible Hulk).

With the fall of Communism and the rise of online connectivity, Horvath sets out to find his father, following the clues from a History Channel-style conspiracy show and the remains of the old research facility adjacent to Los Alamos. Many of his fears will be partly confirmed when he finally meets his father, now known as Hogarth, but everything is much more complicated than he ever suspected—cosmically so.

Palfi pitches his material at a very high level and he engages in a fair amount of mischievous flights of fancy, so expect to get a little lost once or twice. That’s just going to happen. Fortunately, it is worth unpacking all his scientific and philosophically speculation and following his narrative jumps. This is ambitious story-telling and sophisticated sf speculation, but it has genuine cinema substance at its core.

The characters are also sharply-drawn and surprisingly engaging, especially considering how out-there the film sometimes gets. Csaba Polgar portrays Horvath as quite a dogged everyman, but Eric Peterson really creates an impressively nuanced, multi-dimensional (so to speak) portrait of old Hogarth (formerly Horvath). Adam Fekete (who also co-starred in Kills on Wheels) is convincingly whip-smart and angry as heck as Zsolt. However, Diana Magdolna Kiss does not have much significant business to perform as Horvath’s lover Dora, who seems to magically visit whenever his is in need of a quick booty call.

There are some metaphysically significant plot points that are just left hanging at the end of Voice, but that is in keeping with the Lem spirit. Palfi’s outrageous visual stylings similarly fit Lem’s themes like a glove—the early sequences in which old, yet-to-be-revealed Hogarth/Hovarth’s face appears to be cut out of the film with scissors is one of the easier examples to explain. This is a smart, strange film, but that is to its credit. Highly recommended, His Master’s Voice screens today (5/29), as part of Fantaspoa in Porto Alegre.

Heartland ’18: Eternal Winter

Under Socialism, the state controls the means of production—those would be capital, natural resources and labor. That means your labor is not yours to control grant or withhold as you might see fit. If you think that sounds like slavery, the 700,000 Hungarians deported to Soviet work camps during the waning days of WWII would certainly agree.  It was a punishing existence in the remote Donetsk coal mines, but Irén Walter finds a way to survive and even start a new life worth living in Attila Szász’s Eternal Winter (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Heartland International Film Festival.

When the Red Army arrived in Walter’s village, they claimed they were only requisitioning labor for the maize harvest (naturally, they arrive during the Christmas festivities and only chose women at least partly of German heritage). However, it turns out they were really consigning the women to an unspecified term of hard labor in the coal mines. If some prisoners could not endure the toil, well that was just as well, because the guards make it ever so clear punishment for Hungary is just as much a priority for the camp as producing coal for the Soviet war effort.

Being a clergyman’s daughter, Walter does her best to help the other women, but just surviving on her own is a constant challenge. Fortuitously, she receives some unexpected help from Rajmund Müller, one of the male prisoners who arrived earlier. Müller is the camp scrounger, who keeps everyone supplied with hand-rolled cigarettes—for a price. Initially, Walter does not return his romantic interest, in order to stay faithful to a husband who has most likely been killed in action. Eventually, the combination of Müller’s charm and her own survival imperative kick in. Others certainly do worse things to survive—and both Walter and the film forgive them too.

Sunset, the new film from Son of Saul director Laszlo Nemes was the obvious choice for Hungary to submit to the Oscars, but Winter might have been a competitive dark horse candidate. It touches all the usual bases of films documenting historical human rights abuses, but it is also surprisingly forthright in the way addresses survival strategies. It is not what you might assume (stealing food and the like), but rather a matter of giving up hope of any eventual return, in order to reset your life in the camp at zero.

As Walter, Marina Gera truly looks like she is dragged through Hell and back during the course of the film. It is a brave performance, but it is quiet and natural rather than flashy. Yet, it is Sándor Csányi who really lowers the emotional boom as the roguish Müller. Even if it is partly born of necessity, their romance is ultimately quite beautiful, in an exquisitely sad kind of way.

Just when you think Walter and Müller might catch a break, the Communists throw them another curve ball—one that will be especially ironic to contemporary viewers who lived through the 1990s Balkan War and have followed the current refugee controversies in Europe. Szász and Norbert Köbli’s screenplay, adapted from János Havasi’s book, is smart, challenging, and heartbreaking. The former also has a keen eye for framing dramatic shots, but Gergely Parádi’s heavy-handed score does not match the rest of the film’s complexity (a minor flaw, at most). Very highly recommended, Eternal Winter screens this afternoon (10/13), Tuesday (10/16), and Friday (10/19), as part of this year’s Heartland International Film Festival.

WJFF ’18: Budapest Noir

In 1936 Budapest, both Communists and Fascists were actively engaged in underground organizing. Just about everything going on was a crime, but a lot of it was just called politics. There was plenty of the grubbier, more conventional crime going on as well. That is cynical reporter Zsigmond Gordon’s beat. His latest story initially looks like the sort of sad case nobody gives a second thought to, but it threatens to implicate some very powerful people in Éva Gárdos’s Budapest Noir (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Washington Jewish Film Festival.

Budapest is on edge, but some people’s nerves are more jangled than others. The film commences against the backdrop of the funeral for recently deceased Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös. It might sound like an overstatement to call him “pro-Jewish” by contemporary standards, but for the head of state of a nation bordering Austria in the mid-1930s, he was about as progressive you could hope for. Alas, “was” is the key word.

Political issues are largely off Gordon’s radar. While laying low in a café during the state funeral, the reporter gets conned into picking up the check for a rather sultry young woman. The next time he sees her, she will be surrounded by a chalk outline. However, he knows she is not just another dead lady-of-the-night, because he found her file in the police chiefs desk. She also happened to be Jewish, which will be significant.

 Determined to see her case through, Gordon follows her trail to a ritzy brothel catering to the elite upper echelon of government officials and a sleazy Communist pornographer. He will have help when his on-again-off-again lover Krisztina Eckhardt returns from Germany with some incendiary photographs of life under National Socialism. However, he will use all the subsequent chases and brawls as an excuse to avoid the topic of their relationship.

Screenwriter Andras Szeker’s adaptation of Vilmos Kondor’s novel is not the twistiest, turniest narrative ever, but it addresses the 1930s Hungarian Jewish experience in intriguing and provocative ways. Frankly, it is an inspired selection for the WJFF. Yet, for most people it will be the ultra-stylish noir business that really matters. Technically, it is in color, but Elemer and Marci Raglyi’s cinematography is all shadows and noir. Plus, there is also a tasty swing soundtrack that is mostly appropriate to the era. Of course, there are plenty of old world locations in modern Budapest, but the sets and interiors are also carefully detailed. For instance, the wooden street trolley Gordon sometimes rides looks like it is the real deal, painstakingly preserved by a museum.

The cast never quite lands a knockout, but they are steady as it goes. Krisztian Kolovratnik is suitably square-jawed as Gordon (a former boxer), but he also develops some credible Nick & Nora chemistry with Reka Tenki’s Eckhardt. Tenki is terrific as the activist photographer, while Franciska Torocsik’s all-too-brief appearance as the ill-fated lunch guest definitely follows in the suggestive film noir tradition, as established by the likes of Martha Vickers.

Budapest is possibly the most beautiful city in the world, but all that old European elegance is absolutely perfect for a throwback thriller like this. Based on Budapest Noir, we can only hope Gárdos and Kolovratnik can continue adapting the Kondor’s four other Gordon novels. It is a great deal of atmospheric fun, but there is still holds serious historical implications. Highly recommended, Budapest Noir screens again this Saturday (5/12), as part of this year’s Washington Jewish Film Festival.

HFFLA ’17: Strangled

Soviet tanks put down the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Then in 1968, Hungary contributed troops to the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia. In between, a serial killer terrorized the Hungarian town of Martfü, but the police badly complicated their investigation by forcing an innocent man to confess to the first murder. That it is the Communist experience in a nutshell. The real-life fear, paranoia and bureaucratic backstabbing that marked the inter-invasion era are chronicled in Árpád Sopsits’ historically based thriller, Strangled (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Hungarian Film Festival Los Angeles.

Akos Reti was the last person to see his ex-girl-friend alive after she dumped him and he lacked an alibi for the time of death, so it was relatively easy torturing him into a confession. It was less than a year after the failed Revolution, so the police and prosecutors were under enormous press to convict somebody quickly. Nevertheless, there were facts about the case that did not sit well with Inspector Bota.

A few years later, several bodies of similar looking young women turn up, murdered in a roughly comparable manner, while the suicidal Reti languishes in prison. Zoltan Szirmai, the young, trouble-making provincial prosecutor quickly suspects the Reti murder was actually the work of their mystery serial killer and Bota is reluctantly inclined to agree, but nobody else wants to hear it. Thanks to incompetence and dishonesty, the investigation drags on for years. There are even two victims who survived the attacks, but they did not see their attacker. Nevertheless, Szirmai keeps pushing his theory of Reti’s innocence, basically bucking for a transfer to Siberia.

The true story of the Martfü Murderer is absolutely fascinating, bringing to mind the notorious Rostov Ripper (a.k.a. Citizen X) case, in which Communist ideology also served as an accomplice to a vicious serial killer. It is hard to say which is more chillingly depicted here, the killer’s slasher-style crimes, or the Orwellian horrors of the Party’s police and judicial system.

Zsolt Anger and Zsofia Szamosi are both terrific as the hard-drinking Bota and Reti’s outraged and ostracized sister Rita, respectively. Considering their difficult, often antagonistic shared history by their characters, the fact that we can largely accept their halting mutual attraction is a testament to their profoundly humanized portrayals and potent chemistry. Gabor Jaszberenyi is also unsettling convincing portraying the slow, agonizing death of Akos’s soul. Conversely, Karoly Hajduk is uncomfortable and clammy as the real killer (don’t even pretend that’s a spoiler), but he never comes remotely near Hannibal Lecter-Norman Bates levels of creepiness.

Although the film is not a horror movie per se, cinematographer Gabor Szabo (presumably no relation to the late, great pop-jazz guitarist) gives it an evil, nocturnal look. The film is particularly chilling because it is all mostly true in fact and entirely true in spirit. Very highly recommended, Strangled (catch the double meaning of that title) screens this Saturday night (11/4) at the Laemmle Ahrya Fine Arts, as part of the 2017 Hungarian Film Festival Los Angeles.

1945: Guilt and Transition in Hungary

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.

Thanks to Elemer Ragalyi’s stunning black-and-white cinematography, 1945 looks like it could pass for an epilogue to Schindler’s List. Török masterfully controls the atmosphere, forcing viewers to share the stifling hush that has enveloped the village. 1945 is very highly recommended, but it probably requires sophisticated viewers when it opens this Wednesday (11/1) in New York, at Film Forum and the Lincoln Plaza.

Kills on Wheels: Hungary Delivers Plenty of Attitude, but No Cliches

Working as a hired killer is a heck of a way to build up self-worth, but at least the wheelchair-bound Zoli has finally found something that engages him. He suffers from a progressive curvature of the spine that will eventually kill him without corrective surgery, but his refuses to accept his absentee father’s guilt money. Perhaps he and his roommate Barba will be able to fund the procedure themselves when they start assisting Rupaszov, a professional killer recently paralyzed from the waist down. Nobody sees them coming, except maybe Rupaszov’s double-crossing client in Attila Till’s Kills on Wheels (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Zoli’s mother tries to sugarcoat it, but he knows his father walked out soon after he was born to avoid dealing with him. Like a Dostoevskian character, he would rather implode on his own terms rather than take scraps from the table of the well-to-do father he has never met. However, there could be an alternative, thanks to the arrival of Janos Rupaszov at their assisted living facility.

Before his injury, Rupszov was a fireman, but he now works as an assassin for Rados, a Serbian gangster out to eliminate an entire rival gang, man by man. Initially, Rupaszov cuts through them at a blistering clip. After all, nobody considers a man in a wheelchair to be any kind of threat, so guards are down around him. Of course, as the hits get more complicated, he needs a handful of assistants like Zoli and Barba, who happen to be equally invisible to the man on the street. Aside from the semi-autobiographic but highly exaggerated comic book Zoli’s is writing with Barba, his work with Rupaszov is about the only thing that will get him to stop moping around their room.

Throughout Kills, Till walks a fine line with the agility of a Flying Wallenda. He definitely delivers the edgy, dark humor the very premise promises, but the film never feels exploitative. In fact, Till’s screenplay sneaks up on viewers emotionally coldcocking them in the third act. Hungary isn’t exactly the most progressive nation on Earth these days, which might heighten some viewers’ wariness. Yet, Till has probably produced the year’s smartest, most sophisticated film about comparative abilities. Frankly, Hollywood and Western Europe do not have the gumption to make such an honest, in-your-face film, so it is up to the couldn’t-give-a-damn Orban-era Hungary to blast away our self-serving clichés.

Drawing from their real-life experiences, Zoltán Fenyvesi and Ádám Fekete play Zoli and Barba like complicated characters rather than symbols. Indeed, they are completely and utterly believable teenagers: ill-mannered, uncouth, and generally preoccupied with girls. As Rupaszov, Szabolcs Thuróczy’s magnetic screen presence compliments them nicely. On the other side of the coin, Dusán Vitanovics is entertainingly sinister as the absolutely, positively irredeemable Rados.

There is no cheap sentiment in Kills, but Till still manages to earn a little the hard way. That might sabotage the ending for hardcore cynics out there, but they can’t fault the gutsy build-up. Recommended more for people who don’t think they’ll like it rather than those who do, Kills on Wheels opens tomorrow (10/20) in New York, at the Village East.

DIFF ’16: Demimonde

When a prostitute is as successful as Elza Mágnás, they call her a courtesan. For a scandalous woman in 1910 Budapest, she had done quite well for herself. She landed a wealthy sugar-daddy who kept her in comfort, but her mercenary ruthlessness would ultimately be her undoing. The events leading up to Mágnás’s violent end are chronicled in Attila Szász’s Demimonde (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Dallas International Film Festival.

When Kató Szebeni applies for an assistant maid position, she expects something more like Downton Abbey than Fanny Hill. The dynamic between the housekeeper, Rózsi Kóbori and their mistress, Mágnás, is conspicuously tense, but the virtuous young woman is decidedly impressed by her dinner guest, the romantic poet, Gergely Sóvágó. It seems the lady of the house has been cheating on her benefactor, Max Schmidt, with the ardent young man. This particularly offends Kóbori, who knew both Mágnás and Schmidt when their circumstances were drastically different.

There was a time when Mágnás and Kóbori were both “hostesses” working at the “supper club” run by Cili Mama. Both spent quality time with Schmidt, but Mágnás managed to hook him. She now takes sadistic pleasure in reminding Kóbori how greatly their fortunes have diverged. Yet, the resentful housekeeper takes liberties few servants would be allowed. Obviously, the naïve Szebeni is unprepared for such a hothouse atmosphere, so Mágnás takes her under her wing, knowing full well it will only increase Kóbori’s bitterness.

Demimonde is like the classiest Danielle Steel story ever. It is just brimming with cattiness and sexual betrayal, yet it always looks like a Merchant-Ivory production. Frankly, it is rather baffling that it has not been picked up by a specialty distributor yet, because it is wildly commercial, at least by the standards of Hungarian cinema. Patricia Kovács and Dorka Gryllus give no quarter as the former friends, whereas Laura Döbrösi gives real emotional heft and dimension to Szebeni’s wide-eyed innocence. Watching the resulting friction is quite entertaining.

András Nagy’s cinematography is suitably lush, while Gergely Parádi’s anachronistic electronic soundtrack conveys the hedonistic recklessness of Mágnás’ world. It is an erotically charged film that also happens to be smart and richly realized. Highly recommended for patrons of mature costume dramas, Demimonde screens this coming Tuesday (4/19) and Wednesday (4/20), as part of the Dallas International Film Festival.

Submitted by Hungary: Son of Saul

In National Socialist concentration camps, Jews who served as “Sonderkommando” were afforded modest privileges and allowed comparatively free movement within the confining walls. Yet, it was undeniably hellish duty. Charged with escorting prisoners into the gas chambers and cleaning up after the mass executions, their first order of business was often to dispatch their predecessors. The new Sonderkommando’s families frequently followed soon thereafter. Consequently, they had no illusions about their ultimate fate. It is rather understandable why the most significant uprising at Auschwitz-Birkenau was planned by the Sonderkommando. Saul Ausländer is part of the rebellion’s inner circle, but he will be distracted by an even more profound crisis in László Nemes’ Son of Saul (trailer here), Hungary’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens this Friday at Film Forum.

Frankly, Son of Saul might be most effective if viewers are not fully briefed on what to expect. It is safe to confirm, this is indeed a Holocaust story, incorporating a very real event, executed with unusually personal immediacy. The resulting viewing experience is not merely bracing. It is sort of like being Tasered. However, judging from some colleagues’ reactions, it may well be that the more forewarned you are, the less potent Nemes’ approach will be, so proceed with caution.

It starts as just another day in the National Socialist death factory for Ausländer, until he sees a body that cracks his defensive shell. Like Ausländer, we see him only after his death. While not strictly adhering to Ausländer’s as-seen-through-his-eyes POV, Nemes largely limits his shots to what would easily be within his field of vision. As an experienced Sonderkommando, he is somewhat desensitized to the horrors that would have been horrific centerpieces of other Holocaust films. Instead, we get a sense of the kinetic maelstrom of death he must navigate.

To further emphasize its restrictive scope, Son of Saul was composed expressly for the pre-widescreen Academy aspect ratio. The audience is immediately aware just how much they are not seeing, necessarily feeling disoriented as a result. Nemes forces the audience to figure out Ausländer’s relationships to other Sonderkommando through the dramatic context of what follows. This is a remarkably physical film that is just as choreographed as any musical or martial arts extravaganza.

Evidently, Ausländer reluctantly agreed to help scrounge supplies for the revolt, because he understood how little he had to lose. However, when he thinks he recognizes the body in question, he starts recklessly improvising a scheme to prevent the requisite autopsy and find a Rabbi to say Kaddish. He will knowingly jeopardize the imminent uprising, but his mission is equally defiant in its way.

For most of the cast, simply surviving the non-stop bedlam constitutes quite a performance. However, Géza Röhrig is quietly devastating as Ausländer. Essentially, he shows us the stirrings of a long dormant soul struggling to assert itself. It is a painfully honest, desperately lean performance that will shame this year’s histrionically indulgent award-seeking performances (we’re looking at you, Carol).

Son of Saul is not exactly immersive, but it gives the audience a visceral sense of the confusion and dehumanization necessary to make the gas chambers run. This is an exhausting film, but also a uniquely powerful one, unlike almost any other well-meaning holocaust narrative. Highly recommended, it opens this Friday (12/18) in New York at Film Forum.

AFI’s EU Showcase ’15: Liza the Fox Fairy

Japan is the land of the kaidan and the grudge. Nobody does ghosts better. Even in a whimsical retro-1970s capitalist Hungary, you will find Japanese ghosts tormenting the living. The spirit of 1960s crooner Tomi Tani might look benign, but he will cause all sorts of problems for a naïve private nurse in Károly Ujj Mészáros’s Liza, the Fox-Fairy (trailer here), which screens as part of the AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase.

For years, Liza has dutifully cared for Marta, the Hungarian widow of the former Japanese ambassador. Through her employer, Liza has absorbed a love of Japanese history and culture, including Tani’s sugary grooves. For years, the singer has inexplicably haunted Marta’s flat, but only Liza is able to see him, assuming he is a benevolent spirit. Tani has fallen in love with her, but that is a bad thing, especially when the lonely-hearted Liza finally starts to get proactive about romance.

When everyone who gets close to her starts to die, including Marta, Liza figures out she has been cursed to become a mythological Fox-Fairy. All men who love her are doomed to such a fate. Naturally, the police start to suspect her of multiple murders, especially since she inherited her employer’s flat, over the objections of Marta’s greedy relatives. The only exception is the pure-hearted but dangerously clumsy Sgt. Zoltan, an ardent fan of Finnish country music, who becomes Liza’s other unlikely flat-mate.

Fox-Fairy looks like a Wes Anderson film on twee steroids, but it has a surprising edge to it. Arguably, it is more kaidan than quirk-fest, which is cool. However, Liza and Zoltan are also refreshingly gentle souls, whom even the most jaded viewers will root for. Evidently, Mészáros and Bálint Hegedűs adapted a stage play by Zsolt Pozsgai for the big screen, but it is hard to imagine how all their visual mischief-making could be rendered for live theater. Still, it would be worth watching Broadway take a shot at it, even if the production fell on its face. Frankly, the film has way more special effects than you would imagine, but it would be either spoilery or utterly baffling to try to explain their context. Yet, Mészáros always maintains a very personal vibe throughout the film.

Mónika Balsai and Szabolcs Bede-Fazekas are terrific as Liza and Zoltan, respectively. They are both endearing in a puppy dog kind of way and achingly earnest, without ever getting cloying. Likewise, the Danish-Japanese David Sakurai is gleefully evil and impressively suave as Tani. As if he were not entertainingly villainous enough, Zoltán Schmied truly personifies oily sleaze as Henrik, Marta’s playboy nephew, whom Liza mistakenly falls for.

Somehow, Liza manages to be both cute and dark, which is quite a feat of filmmaking on Mészáros’s part. It is a wildly inventive film, but the style never overwhelms the characters or narrative. Very highly recommended, Liza, the Fox-Fairy screens this coming Thursday (12/17) as part of the AFI’s EU Film Showcase.

Sundance ’15: White God

It is like a cross between the Incredible Journey and Willard/Ben franchises, but carrying the baggage of recent rise of Hungarian nationalism. The underdogs are truly underdogs, but they will have their day in Kornél Mundruczó’s allegorical fable, White God (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Much to everyone’s consternation, Lili and her faithful mutt Hagen must spend the summer with the father she barely knows. He is not crazy about it either, especially when a neighbor tips off the authorities to the noisy Hagen. To encourage purebreds and provide an ominous symbolic parallel, the authorities have levied a punitive tax on mixed mongrels, like the gentle Hagen.

Of course, Lili’s veritably deadbeat Daniel is not about to pay Hagen’s licensing fee, so he dumps him off by the side of the road. He is not the only one to get this idea. The confused Hagen soon falls in with a pack of newly wild mix-breeds, learning to evade the animal control thugs. Lili and Hagen try their best to find each other, but unfortunately, he falls into the hands of an underground dogfighting trainer, who hopes the mold Hagen into a contender through his savage conditioning.

When you get right down to it, Hagen’s story is more eventful a complete Noah Baumbach retrospective, but he meets his destiny when he is finally captured and sent to the pound. Rather than simply wait to be euthanized, Hagen will rise up like Spartacus and lead a massive dog revolt. In all honesty, this is what most people will be going to White God to see—and it is pretty spectacular.

Lest anyone fret, White God was filmed using American guidelines for animal handling. No animals were harmed during the process. Presumably, no humans were either, but it is harder to be so definitive on that point. Regardless, the canines are all eerily expressive, particularly Luke and Bodie, who play Hagen. Three years ago, everyone’s tail was wagging for Uggie in The Artist, but the Labrador-sharpei-hound brothers take animal performance to a higher level.

Cinematographer Marcell Rév captures the action from a remarkable dog’s eye level. His intimate perspective really helps anthropomorphize the canines. His wide angle shots also powerfully render the apocalyptic third act. Oh, the human beings, Zsófia Psotta and Sándor Zsótér are not bad either, but her acting-out drama with older school mates gets a bit tiresome.

The White God title is apparently a half-baked reference caste, creed, colonialism and everything else that imposes hierarchies on people, but even when the dog-pack is rampaging, the film never feels as clumsily didactic as that would suggest. Somehow, Mundruczó just flips the allegorical anarchy switch and we accept it. It is a pretty impressive feat of direction and animal handling. Indeed, Arpad Halasz and Teressa Miller (daughter of veteran handler Karl Lewis Miller, whose credits include Cujo and White Dog) are key collaborators in realizing Mundruczó’s vision. Hard to define but absolutely worth experiencing, White Dog screens again tomorrow (1/25) and next Saturday (1/31) in Park City, during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The Notebook: A Different Kind of War Diary

Perhaps no nation’s history during World War II is as torturously complex as the Hungarian experience. Although Regent Miklós Horthy largely refused to abet National Socialism’s Final Solution, his resistance was tragically reversed by a full scale occupation and the Arrow Cross coup d’état. In war-torn 1944, twin thirteen year old brothers will learn the worst lessons possible from Germans, Soviets, and their fellow Hungarian countrymen alike in János Szász’s Oscar nominated The Notebook (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

The nameless twins had lived sheltered lives, but the war’s grim turn changes everything. Fearing for their safety in the city, their mother deposits them with the grandmother they have never known. She is not pleased to meet them. Conspicuously estranged from her daughter, the old woman feels no emotional bond to the two boys. Reluctantly accepting their presence on her farm, she works them like animals for meager rations. When they complain, she beats them before drinking herself into a stupor.

The boys receive similar treatment from the villagers, who openly refer to the old woman as a witch. As a survival strategy, the twins banish all memory of their parents. To harden their bodies and deaden their souls, they institute a training regimen of physical abuse and voluntary starvation. Their only friend is “harelip,” a somewhat older girl on a neighboring farm, who tutors them in criminal techniques. Yet, they still document their daily lives in the notebook, in accordance with the father’s instructions.

Based on Agota Kristof’s source novel, The Notebook is sort of the fictional anti-thesis of Anne Frank’s Diary. While the brothers document the horrors of war from a young person’s perspective, there is nothing life-affirming or empathic to glean from their journal entries. Instead, it is a harrowing account of their efforts to become inhuman in order to survive an inhumane situation. Yet, the brothers do not evolve into true sociopaths. Rather, their remnants of decency consistently manifest themselves in problematically violent ways.

Ironically, the brothers’ only protector is the local ranking German officer, who displays suggestively pedophilic tendencies. Ensconced in their grandmother’s former home, he appreciates their singular training sessions. Not so surprisingly, when the Soviets arrive, they act more like rapacious conquerors than liberators. Yet, the worst abuses of Hungarians are arguably committed by other Hungarians.

Since the brothers largely react with such stoic indifference to each new outrage, it is difficult to pass judgment on the young leads, András and László Gyémánt, except to commend their poker faces. In contrast, Piroska Molnár is an absolute dread terror as their Grandmother Dearest, but her monster is not without pathos. As the officer, Ulrich Thomsen is the model of Teutonic severity, whose black leather neck-brace adds creepy Fifty Shades overtones to his appearance.

At times, Szász cranks up the privations and tribulations to almost excessively lurid levels, but the film’s black soul consistently pulls it back into a stark naturalism. Innocence is not merely killed in Notebook it is incinerated and its ashes are dispersed into nothingness. Yet, irony still asserts itself in uncomfortable ways. Recommended with respect rather than affection for those who appreciate uncompromising morality tales, The Notebook opens this Friday (8/29) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

There Was Once . . . A Small Town in Hungary

Kalocsa’s synagogue was built with 40,000 bricks donated by the Archbishop, the town’s feudal ruling authority. Though relatively small in number, Kalocsa’s Jewish citizens were an integral part of the town economy and the backbone of its middle class. Surely there was the occasional expression of anti-Semitism, but none of the town’s surviving deportees remembered any before the War reached Kalocsa in earnest. Researching Kalocsa’s history, local high school teacher Gyöngyi Mago was alarmed by how few traces remained of the town’s once thriving Jewish population. Hoping to record their history and erect a proper memorial, Mago contacted every survivor she could track down, including filmmaker Gabor Kalman, who documented her efforts in There Was Once . . (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

Though it still stands, the Kalocsa synagogue had been repurposed several times for secular uses. As a result, the commemorative tablets listing the names of Kalocsa citizens murdered in the Holocaust was moved to Budapest. Mago hopes to return them to the town as part of a memorial ceremony. Both the current archbishop and the town’s mayor are supportive of the idea, as is Kalman and several other former Kalocsa deportees. However, there are vague rumblings heard from Hungary’s new militant extremist party, clearly modeled on the Arrow Cross. Yet, with the official establishment firmly on-board, things proceed orderly enough.

On one level, TWO is a pretty compelling case-study of the Hungarian Jewry experience in the Twentieth Century. As a historian, Mago makes a particularly salient point explaining how Communism compounded the tragedy of the Holocaust. In fact, many more Jewish Hungarians returned to their homes than is often commonly understood. However, when they saw the inevitable rise of another totalitarian regime, they reluctantly emigrated, applying the hard learned lessons of history.

Shockingly, an ugly crime mars Mago’s carefully planned ceremony. However, this incident is left conspicuously unresolved, which gives the film an unbalanced feeling. While it raises some concerns for Mago and her family, the film concludes with something of a passing of the familial torch that should leave viewers satisfied and even inspired, nonetheless.

TWO is traditional in its approach, but obviously such subject matter resists unconventional treatment. Mago and Kalman relate tragic family histories with sensitivity and insight. Indeed, the notions of documenter and documented mix together, with Mago the historian recording the oral history of her subject, Kalman, while his camera captures Mago at work as an activist historian.

Throughout TWO, Kalocsa outwardly looks like a beautiful and inviting city. It would almost be a perfect film for the tourism bureau, were it not for the somewhat unsettling third act. Yet, everyone speaking on camera says all the right things. It is hard to underestimate the lingering psychological damage wrought by years of fascism and Communism, manifested in the Neo-Nazi-Arrow Cross wannabes. That is why the everyday heroics of Mago are so significant and why Kalman performs such a service in recording them. Informative and at times quite moving, TWO is definitely recommended when it opens this Friday (9/23) in New York at the IFC Center and in greater Los Angeles at the Laemmle Sunset 5.