Faced with death, Sindbad looks back on his life. Old photos and letters evoke past loves and short-lived passions. In these rambling memories, he recalls past moments of pleasure in a woman’s smile or a magnificent lunch. The plastic world of remembering is demonstrated by the freely flowing visual images. This poetic vision made on the basis of the Sindbad short stories by Gyula Krúdy is a core work of Hungarian film. Zoltán Huszárik builds up a strange world from fragments of events, visual shards and subjective feelings.
Tag: HUNGARY
In the mad morning rush, five-year-old Junior is constantly underfoot, then for a little nothing his father flies into a temper and as punishment Junior is sent to the bathroom for a few minutes. During this period of solitary confinement the boy’s imagination is let loose and a whole story begins to take shape in his mind in which finally he forgives the adults who are angry at him for no reason whatsoever. György Palásthy’s classical family movie looks as though it was made directly for the retro-wave of the future: from the bagged milk to the bubbling coffee-maker, everything is included that was part of everyday life from decades earlier while it takes us on a colourful trip back in time through the streets of seventies Budapest.
This Hungarian black comedy is set at a very special fantasy park that allows visitors to play organized war games. It proves to be a very popular attraction amongst the bored tourists until they suddenly realize that they are shooting real bullets. The authorities quickly close the park, but then recruits its director to begin using it to train real troops.
Alegory of the suppression of the 1919 revolution and the advent of fascism in Hungary; in the countryside, a unit of the revolutionary army spares the life of father Vargha, a fanatical priest. He comes back and leads massacres. A new force, represented by Feher, apparently avenges the people, but only to impose a different, more refined and effective kind of repression.
When young Tako’s father dies in Hungary in 1945, Tako is left with scant memories of him. Nurtured by his mother, the boy nonetheless fantasizes about the man his father was, imagining him to have been a hero. Grown into a man himself, Tako falls for a Jewish refugee, Anni. Burdened by her own heritage as a Jew, Anni sparks in Tako a desire to find out what his father was really like, and he delves into the role his father played in World War II.
Metaphor about art, about time, or about how art consumes the artist’s life in his eagerness to create his work, in which he has to pour talent, vigor, and the best years of his life.
The film is an artistically spare depiction of the Greek myth of Sysiphus, sentenced to eternally roll a stone up a mountain. The story is presented in a single, unbroken shot, consisting of a dynamic line drawing of Sysiphus, the stone, and the mountainside.