The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

Baron Prášil; fantasy adventure, Czech Republic, 1962; D: Karel Zeman, S: Miloš Kopecký, Jana Brejchová, Rudolf Jelínek, Rudolf Hrušínský, Karel Höger

Tonik, an astronaut on the Moon, is surprised to find Cyrano de Bergerac and Baron Munchausen there, who mistake him for a "Moonman". Munchausen decides to show Tonik his world, so they board a ship carried by horses with wings that bring them to Earth, to a city in Ottoman Empire. Munchausen and Tonik free princess Bianca from the Sultan and escape on horses. The three see a ship in the sea and swim to it to safety, but it sinks in a sea battle. Munchausen, Tonik and Bianca are swalloved by a giant fish and find another ship inside its stomach. The fish gets stranded and the people escape from it. Munchausen, Tonik and Bianca help save a castle from a siege, but Tonik is sent to prison for suspicion that he wants to blow up the castle. Munchausen throws a candle on gunpowder which causes an explosion that catapults the castle to the Moon. 

Whichever fantasy story 'Czech Méliès' Karel Zeman decides to make into a movie, he makes it even more imaginative due to his unusual syncretism of live action and cutout animation. One of his most critically recognized films, "The Fabulous Baron Munchausen" is a charming and elegant fairytale and ode to escapism from reality, due to the title character who lies about his stories that are so over-the-top that the viewers have to chuckle at the absurdity of it all. Zeman is closer to von Baky's "Munchausen" than he is to Gilliam's dark and grotesque "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen", meaning that it is a movie with adventures, escape, danger and threats, but it's all harmless and relaxed. The storyline is meandering from one episode to another, making it highly arbitrary, yet by setting people in the bacground of his paper set-designs, Zeman is able to create a little cult film. It starts with a comical opening where an astronaut on the Moon is surprised to find footsteps there, leading him to a crashed rocket with five people without spacesuits, including Munchausen and Cyrano de Bergerac. Using his cutout animation, Zeman conjures up a whole array of creatures: horses with wings carrying a ship from the Moon to Earth; a giant fish that swallows a ship; a giant eagle; a swordfish holding a jacket; a mermaid... But he is also able to insert a lot of humor with some moments that border on comedy. 

For instance, during the night, Munchausen has a duel with the Ottoman harem guard both with a sword and a chess board game, allowing him to move chess pieces. At one point, a dozen Ottoman soldiers enter the room, so the harem guard moves a chess piece and says: "Check!", while Munchausen replies with: "Mate!", as he stretches his hand out behind his back and shoots at the light on the ceiling, creating darkness which confuses all the guards, as he defeats them. Another guard is hitting the alarm bell, Tonik shows up and takes away his drumstick to keep quiet, then the guard throws him at the giant bell, but it swings back and makes one last alarm sound when it hits and knocks out the guard on the head. Munchausen wants to close the window with his leg, but it gets stuck, so he takes off his boot, which is left hanging on th window, as he takes care of Biance. A steam ship shakes so much that even apples from a painted tree start falling off from the painting. Zeman doesn't have that Spielbergian sense for excitement and weight when introducing these fantasy creatures which sometimes just come and go in a minute, which feels almost superficial, and the characters are not as important as just being pawns in this giant set-up designed to create a fantasy world. Nontheless, "Munchausen" is a refreshing and imaginative non-Hollywood fantasy film.

Grade:+++

Man of the East

...e poi lo chiamarono il magnifico; western comedy, Italy / France, 1972; D: E.B. Clucher, S: Terence Hill, Gregory Walcott, Dominic Barto, Harry Carrey Jr., Yanti Somer, Enzo Fiermonte

19th century. Englishman Thomas Moore arrives to the United States to inherit a real estate from his late father. His stagecoach is robbed by three men wearing bandit scarves: Bull, Monkey and Joe. Later, when they meet again and Moore tells him who his father was, the three bandits become his friends since they worked for his father. However, criminals want to chase them away and take their land. Moore falls in love with a beauty from the nearby town, Candida, but a rough ranch administrator, Morton, wants to marry her, so he beats up Moore. Bull, Monkey and Joe train Moore, who becomes skillful enough to win against Morton in a shooting duel, and thus Candida stays with Moore.

E.B. Clucher's third cooperation with comedian Terence Hill, "Man of the East" is a fun western comedy, but it doesn't have a single unforgettable joke as did their first two films, "They Call Me Trinity" and "Trinity is Still My Name". As is the case with Italian 'Spaghetti Westerns", even comical ones, the Italian film crew again pretends to be somewhere in the Wilde West of the United States while never setting foot off Europe (in this case, the exteriors of the Plitvice Lakes). The meandering story is all over the place, not really able to decide what its plot tangle is, but Hill's physical jokes and Clucher's sense for comedy manage to carry this (overlong) film. Some jokes really do work: for instance, bandit Monkey is introduced behind bars in a prison, stealing money from the pocket of the prison guard (!) behind his back. His friend, Bull, is introduced as a mute worker at a stagecoach station, but suddenly speaks up in defiance as two bounty hunters sitting at the table badmouth his late friend, an Englishman, calling the latter a "bastard". Hill isn't in top-notch shape and is rather "subdued" as the late Englishman's awfully polite son, which works badly for him in the rough Wild West. In one of the most insane gags, after some criminals wanted to buy off their land and house, Hill's character Moore picks up some rubbery molasses from the ground, pressing it with his fingers, saying how the soil here is very fertile and that they could plant a lot of seeds here and expect a god harvest, but then Bull tells him he is actually holding horse's manure in his hand. The concept of the story that Moore should stop being polite and become a "tough man" is misguided, yet the actors all are fine, especially Yanti Somer as Candida, Moore's love interest, the opening song is catchy, the running gag involving the two bounty hunters always forgetting about the third member of the bandits who sneaks up behind them is amusing, as is the allegorical final scene about the end of the Wild West.

Grade:++

Man of Iron

Człowiek z żelaza; political drama, Poland, 1981; D: Andrzej Wajda, S: Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, Marian Opania, Krystyna Janda, Irena Byrska, Wiesława Kosmalska

A radio reporter, Winkel, is summoned by the communist authorities to find dirt and make a report about steel worker Maciej Tomczyk who leads a strike at the shipyard in Gdansk, so that the TV editors can later edit it into a disinformation campaign to discredit Maciej. At a protest where Maciej holds a speech, Winkel meets an acquaintance, Dzidek, who tells him more: in '70, Maciej's father Birkut was killed during the government crackdown of protestors. Winkel also visits Agnieszka in police custody, who tells him how she married Maciej, but had to leave with their baby to live with her father from fear of the authorities. Despite blackmail from the authorities, Winkel quits his job and embraces the Solidarity labour movement. An agreement is later reached, granting the protestors a labour union independent from the communist authorities.

One of Andrzej Wajda's most famous films, "Man of Iron" is an unapologetically activist film. There is nothing there besides politics, to such an extent that even characters, narrative and cinematic craftsmanship are neglected or even discarded, and thus viewers unfamiliar with the Solidarity movement and its role in the fight for democracy in Poland will not be able to understand the film and won't like it. Nontheless, it was a daring and subversive movie back in the time, a rare story openly critical of the communist dictatorship of Poland in 1981, and even today it is fascinating to wonder how it was allowed to be made in the first place—even the title, "Man of Iron", is a spoof of Stalin's propaganda name "Man of Steel". The opening text slyly says: "All the characters and their names in the film are a work of fiction. But they enact events that really happened." The protagonist Maciej Tomczyk, a shipyard worker, is an allegorical depiction of Lech Walesa (who even makes a cameo five times in the film, either through archive footage or direct appearance in front of the film cameras), whereas Wajda strives towards blending fiction and reality, since some of the protests were filmed on the spot, thereby achieving almost a documentary film at times, even including other key members of the Solidarity movement in certain scenes, such as Anna Walentynowicz. 

Some moments are brilliant. For instance, the ironic scene where a communist member turns around a big violin in his apartment, revealing alcoholic drinks hidden inside it, to offer it to radio reporter Winkel. The sequence where Maciej is assaulted by three paramedics in the hallway who sedate him and put him in a straightjacket, and later in a mental asylum, is a strong example of political abuse of psychiatry, as is the sequence where Maciej and his friends bury the corpse of his father in earth of a graveyard, but when they return later, they discover his body is gone and a new cement tombstone with someone else is now found on his place. These moments have weight since they illustrate that archetypical situation where an evil government is wrong, but instead of admitting its mistake and changing, it rather invests all the resources to gerrymander reality by trying to present good people as evil in order for said evil government to appear good. Some of the dialogue also works, for instance when father Birkut says: "No lie lasts forever" or when Maciej has this exchange with a shipyard worker: "But you will be a slave!" - "I know, but I will still live longer. Your uprising won't change anything." On the other hand, the majority of the lines are schematic and only at the service of checking political points, without much effort to make it more enjoyable for the viewing experience. At 2.5 hours, the movie is definitely overlong by at least 30 minutes and needed better planning—instead of its excessive inclusion of as many details and events from that historical time, since sometimes one symbolic scene is able to say more than ten superfluous scenes repeating the same thing. Unfortunately, despite noble intentions, "Man of Iron" is too dry, since it is more activist inspired than cinematically inspired.

Grade:++

It Happened in Broad Daylight

Es geschah am hellichten Tag; thriller, Switzerland / Germany / Spain, 1958; D: Ladislao Vajda, S: Heinz Rühmann, Gert Fröbe, Sigfrit Steiner, Siegfried Lowitz, Michel Simon, Maria Rosa Salgado, Anita von Ow

Peddler Jacquier finds the corpse of a little girl in the forest, runs to the village pub and phones Lieutenant Matthai from Zürich police to report it. The police arrive at the crime scene, but find no clues except that the girl was killed by a razor blade, so they blame Jacquier who commits suicide. Matthai was supposed to fly to Amman to train the police, but changes his mind and is convinced the real murderer is still out there. Matthai takes the little girl's drawing which depicts her next to a tall man in black. Based on other two murders of little girls along a road from Zürich to Chur, Matthai rents a gas station, hires Miss Heller as a maid and uses her little girl Annemarie as bait. Realizing a businessman, Mr. Schrott, is seeing Annemarie in the forest, Matthai confronts him. Mr. Schrott attacks him with a razor blade, but the police shoot him.

As much as Penn and Nicholson delivered a remarkable effort in their crime film "The Pledge", their remake could not reach the genuine simplicity of brilliance of the excellent original "It Happened in Broad Daylight", one of the best Swiss films. Based on a script by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (who was not satisfied that his meditative ending was changed into a happy one in the film, so he wrote a novel "The Promise"), "It Happened in Broad Daylight" plays with the people's deepest fears, in this case with an unknown misogynist criminal who kills little girls due to his private frustrations, but a one who leaves no trail, yet insuppressible police Lieutenant Matthai (comedian Heinz Ruhmann in a remarkably serious edition) will not give up until he captures him, even if he has to use unconventional methods via a little girl as a "bait". The opening act sets up an incredibly tight mood thanks to sharp writing that creates strong characters and dialogue, relaying on sophistication, not on violence or banal thrills. 

Little details and clever ideas go a long way in this film. When a mob wants to lynch Jacquier, the man who found the corpse of the little girl, but is now suspected of being the murderer himself in the pub, Matthai realizes his small police escort is heavily outnumbered, so he untypically addresses them: "If you can give me one evidence he is guilty, I will hand him over to you." One man says he saw Jacquier walking in the valley, but since three other men from the crowd admit they were also in the valley but said man didn't see them, Matthai ironically comments that he would now have to execute all five of them. While investigating, Matthai stumbles upon a drawing of the murdered girl in the elementary school which depicts her with a tall man giving her a hedgehog, while a car and a goat are also depicted. Upon sitting next to a man in a plane, eating chocolate truffle, Matthai relizes the "hedgehog" was actually said dessert, and that the goat is an insignia of canton Graubünden on the car plates, so he rents a gas station along the road where the murders happened and writes down every car plate with a goat insignia. He also builds a playground right next to the road so that the girl Annemarie can become a bait, in a risky move. The attempts at psychological explanation of the murderer's motives feel weaker, though, and the ending with the large doll is not that well thought out, which comes off as illogical. Nontheless, the movie is crafted with such an elegant and natural craftmanship by director Ladislao Vajda that it seems universal and fresh even today.

Grade:+++

Kes

Kes; drama, UK 1969; D: Ken Loach, S: David Bradley, Freddie Fletcher, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland, Robert Naylor, Brian Glover

Barnsley. Billy Casper (14) lives with his older bully brother Jud and divorced mother in a small house. Jud works in the local coal mine, but Billy doesn't want to follow his footsteps. Bullied in school by other students and uninterested in class, Billy one days climbs up to a nest and steals a little falcon, naming it Kes. Billy feeds Kes in his shed with mice, dead birds and raw meat. When he tells about his falcon in front of the entire school class, his English language teacher Mr. Farthing praises him and even goes to see the bird himself. When Billy spends Jud's money not on a horse race but on fish and chips, and Jud's preferred horse wins, Jud is so angry that he kills Kes. Billy finds the bird in a trash can and burries it in the open.

"Kes" is a Walt Disney film subverted into a depressive social tragedy. There are many movies about a lonely, neglected kid who bonds with an animal as a therapy and escape from the cruel world—a whale in "Free Willy"; a dog in "Lassie"; a horse in "Black Beauty"—or even a fantasy companion—such as "E.T." or "How to Train Your Dragon"—but few had such bitter, sombering aesthetics and naturalism as Ken Loach's approach in "Kes", about a friendship between a kid and a falcon. There is no sugar-coating that pretends nothing too bad cannot happen in life. It is grim, 'raw' and desolate in its gruelling honesty. Loach strives towards showing life as dirty as it is, in this case a kind child, Billy (excellent David Bradley), a hostage of a brute society: Billy is bullied in school not only by students, but also by his physical education teacher (Brian Glover) who throws a football at the boy, causing him to fall in the mud, and later punishes him for not dedicating himself to the football match by throwing Billy into the shover while he turns off the warm water, forcing the naked Billy to climb out of the window as to not freeze any further. 

At the same time, Billy himself isn't idealized—in the opening act, he works by delivering newspapers, and has this exchange with his boss: "I haven't taken nothing of yours yet, have I?" - "I haven't given you a chance, that's why." - "You don't have to. I haven't been nicking for ages now." Billy is also seen in unsympathetic light when using a shotgun to shoot a small bird on a branch to feed his falcon Kes. Despite these highly naturalistic approaches, the movie does "slip" towards a few brief satirical moments, such as the one where the camera shows a comic-book panel Billy is reading or the fantasy football match of the PE teacher with subtitles showing "Manchester United 1 - Spurs 2". The choice of a falcon as Billy's best friend is a strange one. A dog or a cat would have been a much more natural choice than a falcon that just mutely stares at Billy and never shows any affection towards him, aiming only for his food. It would have also made more sense if Billy had found the falcon abandoned, instead of abducting it from the nest. Their interactions are slightly too sparse, while the sequences of Billy in school are too superfluous. But the main theme still rings as strong as ever: the need for self-actualization. As strange as it is, the falcon becomes a symbol for Billy's discovery of some abstract happiness, meaning and a sense of purpose in his empty life. Few people can understand it, but it has an effect on him that is profound. The emotionally devastating ending thus hits you like a brick in the head—this denial of personal happiness, attack on innocence and insisting on cruelty is one of the strongest condemnations of human primitivism, inconsideration and malice caught on cinema. In spite of that, the final scene is flawed, since it feels strangely abrupt and incomplete, as if some conclusion is missing. 

Grade:+++

My Beautiful Laundrette

My Beautiful Laundrette; drama / tragicomedy, UK, 1985; D: Stephen Frears, S: Gordon Warnecke, Daniel Day-Lewis, Saeed Jaffrey, Derrick Branche, Roshan Seth, Rita Wolf

London. Omar is a Pakistani migrant living in a shabby apartment with his father, Hussein, a broke left-wing journalist. Luckily, Omar's uncle Nasser, a businessman, is there to help: after a job at a car wash, he gives Omar a laundrette to manage, and hopes he can arrange a marriage with Tania with him. But Omar is gay and meets his former lover, Englishman Johnny, who was a member of a far-right anti-immigrant group. Omar and Johnny smuggle drugs for Salim, hidden inside a fake beard, and thus gain money to renovate the laundrette which becomes a hit. Nasser has a mistress, Rachel, but his wife makes a potion that gives Rachel a skin rash, so she leaves Nasser. Tania leaves Omar. Thugs ambush and attack Salim in the laundrette, and beat up Johnny who protected him. Omar and Johnny splash each other in the sink.

"My Beautiful Landurette" is all over the place, and yet, this mess gives it that feeling of genuine 'slice-of-life' that makes it realistic even today. It tackles several themes (Pakistani-British relations, lives of immigrants, gay people), but they are always in the background, since the script just takes a funny and witty "proper" observation on life in general, centering around Omar trying to find a job and grow up. The best performances were delivered by Daniel Day-Lewis as Omar's business (and gay love) partner Johnny, and the underrated, excellent Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey as Omar's wealthy uncle Nasser, who senses he can always make a business from the "dirty", undesirable jobs Londoners don't want to do: "There's money in the muck!" This is a sly jab at capitalism and Thatcherism, since Nasser plans to use the capacity of the lower class of Pakistani migrants to catapult himself into the upper class. As he explains to Omar: "You have to know how to squeeze the tits of the system." Several of these subplots are introduced, but subsequently not that fully developed, which comes off as a flaw: the sudden attack of the far-right thugs on Salim at the laudnrette feels almost as an "imposter" in the film; it wasn't explained why Johnny was one of their members; some of Johnny's peculiar behavioral quirks are unexplained (he suddenly leaves with Tania in the rain, drives on the bicycle and crashes back into the house). 

Even Johnny's and Omar's relationship was not that clearly written. They have one (almost) sex scene in the laudnrette's office before they are interrupted, with one unusual detail (while lying on top, Johnny takes a sip from the champagne bottle, kisses Omar, and then lifts his head up to "flow" champagne from his mouth into Omar's), but otherwise their emotional bond is not sensed that much. Omar sees him more as a business partner and acts distanced and cold towards him, an thus their final scene is not earned. The director Stephen Frears shows a lot of sense for depiction of people of that milieu (Omar is smiling watching Tania showing him her breasts outside the window of the living room, behind the backs of Nasser and his friends sitting and talking) and even has some creative camera drives (one fantastic one appears some 83 minutes into the film, as the crane lifts up camera up to the rooftop of the laundrette, showing a thug with a club on top, and then the camera descends on the other side, abck to the street), showing that the rather abrupt and incomplete ending had much more potentials. It doesn't matter, since there is some energy and likeability in the film that makes it almost invincible to flaws.

Grade:+++

Distant Voices, Still Lives

Distant Voices, Still Lives; drama, UK, 1988; D: Terence Davies, S: Lorraine Ashbourne, Angela Walsh, Pete Postlethwaite, Freda Dowie, Dean Williams

First segment: Nell is married to alcholic Tommy, who is violent and sometimes even beats her. They live in Liverpool and have three children: Maisie, Eileen and Tony. After being drafted to the army, Tony rebels against his dad and even breaks the window with his fists. Tommy becomes sick and lands in a hospital. He returns back home and dies. At Eileen's wedding, the siblings are split between those who wish their father was still there and those who are glad he is dead. Second segment: Eileen and her husband Dave have a baby. Maisie also marries, but their marriages aren't always good. Tony falls and is injured in a construction accident. Tony recovers and marries Rose.

A critically acclaimed independent British film drama, "Distant Voices, Still Lives" is a more bitter than sweet anti-nostalgic and semi-autobiographical depiction of director Terence Davies' childhood, but also the working class in the UK during the 40s and 50s in general. Assembled like a stream-of-consciousness, it goes back-and-forth in time, with the three siblings intermittently having flashbacks of their agonizing relationship with their alcoholic father Tommy (very good Pete Postlethwaite), thereby making the movie seem like a very loose collection of episodes, reminiscent of impressionism. The first half of the film is the best precisely because this tension between the three kids and father is sometimes electrifying. In one such moment, Tony, in his 20s, wearing a military uniform, wants to have a drink with dad sitting in the home, who refuses, so Tony shows him the money he received as severance pay and throws the coins into the fireplace: "That's all I've got. But I wouldn't give you daylight." During the Blitz air raid, several people hide in a bomb shelter, but Tommy sleps one of his little daughters in front of everyone ("Where the bleeding hell have you been?!"), showing heavy-handed negligence and inability to be considerate. After dad becomes sick and lands in hospital, Eileen opens the door and sees him standing there: "I've signed myself out of the hospital! I've walked home." The second segment is weaker, though, and feels rather aimless. It has some poetic moments and a few neat camera drives (70 minutes into the film, Maisie holds the hand of her injured husband on the hospital bed, the camera pans up and looks through the window, and then there is a "time jump" to the mother and the family holding the hand of the injured Tony on the hospital bed), but the dialogue and the events are standard, bland and routine, not managing to ignite a bigger enjoyment or spark out of this material.

Grade:++

Schtonk!

Schtonk!; satire, Germany, 1992; D: Helmut Dietl, S: Götz George, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Christiane Hörbiger, Veronica Ferres, Harald Juhnke

Hamburg. Fritz Knobel doesn't earn much money for his paintings, but earns a lot for inventing Nazi memorabilia, a hobby he started since he was a 9-year and sold a fake Hitler's visor cap to an American soldier. Fritz secretly cheats on his wife Biggi with model Martha, who poses while he makes a painting of Eva Braun using her naked body. Fritz sells it to the rich Lentz, and later even makes a forgery of the last volume of Hitler's diary. Slimy reporter Hermann Willie buys the diary for his newspaper, "HH". Smelling a fortune, Fritz starts writing earlier volumes of Hitler's diaries, all until the newspaper pays 9 million Deutsche Mark for it. Fritz flees to a Swiss town, while the federal police concludes the diaries were written on notebooks manufactured only after World War II, and are thus a forgery. Hermann becomes crazy and decides to search for Hitler, thinking he is still alive.

Based on the real case of forger Konrad Kujau who created Hitler's fake diaries, "Schtonk!" is a satriical German auto-reflection on its own society (but also other countries) where that unhealthy fascination with Nazism and its legacy still lies on the margins, contemplating why some people are so obssessed with the past they never experienced, instead of living their own lives in the present. The writer and director Helmut Dietl uses unusual camera angles and sharp framing, but also relies on several jokes and black humor to carry the story, though he did not manage to make something more than the standard storyline that was expected from the concept. He shows how desperate the yellow press reporter Hermann (very good Gotz George) is, as he has to resort to playing a gigolo for the rich Freya von Hepp, Göring's grandniece, already obvious when they meet in the restaurant and have this exchange: "And you are...?" - "Broke." This gives justification for Hermann's attempt to get out of this slump and his motive for trying to gain a fortune to persuade his newspaper to buy Hitler's diaries. When Hermann wants to speak to the deputy editor, he greets him with contempt: "How long have we not see each other?" - "We have actually never seen each other." Fritz's "inspirations" for writing the diaries is a 'hit-or-miss' affair: in one sequence, he sees some people running a marathon on the road, so he already imagines writing a section about how Hitler opened the Olympic Games in '36. At one point, he is seen wearing a dark coat and even having a Hitler's accent in his mind as he writes further text on paper at his home. "Schtonk!" spoofs the supply and demand problem, since scammers will invent a fake supply just to sell it to the masses and earn a fortune, though some banal or lukewarm jokes could have been improved (for instance, Fritz writing in the diary how Hitler had "flatulance").

Grade:++

Children of Nature

Börn náttúrunnar; drama, Iceland / Norway / Germany, 1991; D: Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, S: Gísli Halldórsson, Sigríður Hagalín, Baldvin Halldórsson, Björn Karlsson, Bruno Ganz

Geiri (78) shoots his dog, packs his things and abandons his desolate farm. He goes to live in a Reykjavik apartment of his daughter, but since her teenage daughter argues with him, the family arranges that Geiri is transferred to an elderly home. There he meets Stella (79), his childhood friend. Together, they steal a car and drive off to die together at their childhood village on an island. The police tries to find them. They take a boat to the island and find the former fishermen outpost abandoned. Geiri finds Stella dead on the beach. He goes to the outpost and walks to the edge of a cliff, disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

"Children of nature" is one of those movies that tackle the ultimate taboo: death, or better said, accepting the inevitability of it. The simple story about an old couple who decides to die together in the abandoned village of their birth is subtle, emotional, minimalist and humanistic, but also has a certain sense for directorial craftmanship that tries to imply and rely on the subconscious rather than on a clear narrative—in the first 10 minutes, there is no dialogue; in the last 20 minutes, there is no dialogue. Several contrasts imbibe the film: the protagonist Geiri leaves a rural area, his farm, to live in an urban area, a residential building; whereas the finale becomes almost metaphysical and negates the realistic approach up to it (Bruno Ganz is credited as "The Angel" and appears as a man in a black coat who puts his hand on Geiri's shoulder in the sequence in the abandoned building; a naked woman is waving from the shore at Geiri and Stella in a boat, as the sailor says: "There is no need to be afraid of her. She is just a ghost"). The nature plays a big role in the film, showing the landscapes as a journey whose end leads to its beginning, the birth place of the couple. The two lead actors give fine performances, and are given intimacy to understand them (for instance, while sleeping on the hay in the open, they have this exchange: "I wonder if it's the same moon that shone on us back in the old days?" - "I don't know. I don't think it has ever recovered since they started taking strolls up there"). "Children of Nature" suffers from at times an overstretched running time and slow pacing, yet as a meditative contemplation on the cycle of passing and death, it is shaped to work completely. 

Grade:+++

The Round-Up

Szegénylegények; historical drama, Hungary, 1966; D: Miklós Jancsó, S: János Görbe, Zoltán Latinovits, Tibor Molnár, Gábor Agárdy

A prison in Hungary, 1868. The 1848 Hungarian Revolution failed, and thus the authorities are persecuting the last remnants of the followers of Lajos Kossuth and outlaw Sandor Rosza. The prison officers suspect that some of Sandor's men are among the convicts, so they summon a convict, Janos, who is sentenced to be hanged, and offer him amnesty if he can find someone who killed more people. Janos becomes a snitch and singles out convict Veszelka as one of Sandor's men, but since Veszelka doesn't want to confess anything, the prison guards whip a woman he loves in a gauntlet, causing her to die, so Veszelka, who was forced to watch from the tower, jumps into his death. Janos is later found strangled in his cell. The prison guards suspect convict Kabai. The prison guards start a mobilization of the convicts, and order convict Torma to assemble a unit made out of the former rebel army. The guards declare that their leader, Sandor was given amnesty, but that this does not apply to his unit, which is now identified and captured.

Ranked in a local poll ("The Budapest Twelve") as the best film of Hungarian cinema, Miklos Jancso's drama "The Round-Up" is in reality still a notch below all the hype. Set in only one location, a prison in the middle of a meadow, far away from anywhere, where the authorities are frantically searching for the remnants of the former rebel army of the failed 1848 Hungarian Revolution, the movie was interpreted as a sly allegory on the anti-communist '56 Hungarian Revolution, with a sense of isolation of the Eastern Europe and a well conjured up, depressive feeling of repression and authoritarianism. It starts with cynical sketches of military uniforms, boots, helmets, guns, sabers and cannons, as the narrator explains: "The spirit of 1848 has become a mere empty phrase..." Jancso is able to craft aesthetic, sharp shot compositions, but the overall storyline is still too monotone, grey, standard and narrowed down. The character development is abandoned as there are no emotions, no intimate scenes or some clever lines that gives these characters some greater interest, leaving the whole cast as cold, disposable (the top billed actor playing the seemingly main role of snitch Janos dies already some 57 minutes into the film) and mechanical. Only occasionally does the film offer some more untypical or strange situation (a naked woman running in between a row of some twenty prison guards who whip her). The final ploy with which the prison guards manage to trick the convicts into revealing they were members of the rebel army is neat, yet the movie simply needed a more colorful, higher amplitude of events and style.

Grade:++