Experienced Hollywood editor of Hungarian origin Eva Gardos threw this movie together more or less about her own life for her first feature film direction. One unfortunately has to be suspicious about any such first film a director puts together about his or her own life. Few could pull that off to produce a masterpiece. The tale, surely a moving, intriguing, even fascinating one, is not told too well. Still I will recommend this film for two BIG reasons. If you're not interested in what I deem to be problems with the film, move on to the last para.
The language problem, the constant dilemmas the film-makers had to face about when to use dubbing, when not (also depending on which market you want to sell on), when a character should be speaking in American English, in English with a Hungarian accent, in Hungarian with an English accent or Hungarian, obviously must have posed a great difficulty in handling the task of story-telling, and would have made suspending disbelief a bit more difficult for the audience anyway. But English with a Slavic accent as English with a Hungarian accent really doesn't work well when you hear it. OK, for an American with no Hungarian connection it can be alright. But there were problems if you put yourself beyond this, too. Beside errors in telling the story, the Hungary showed in the movie is just not real. It's interesting that among the comments so far I have only seen a guy from Kent (the UK) point that out, even contrary to some others who found the atmosphere of the Hungarian scenes authentic. I have felt neither the political situation get across to the viewer, nor local culture being authentically presented. Altogether, the mood of the era is not captured at all, not translated to the mainly American audience that may still, of course, feel as though it would be.
So why would I still recommend the film? On the one hand Eva Gardos doesn't do justice to herself, for the story is really damn interesting. Not just because of the role history plays in it, but because you have women in the focus here and so you're guaranteed to see strong female characters. Or not exactly guaranteed, for I have seen films with women in the focus end up differently, but in 'American Rhapsody' this is something that actually works well. It's primarily one person's responsibility I believe. She is the other reason you have to check this movie out. After the film I looked up her name on IMDb, thinking it was time for some talent-spotting. 'Scarlett Johansson' OK, I decided to remember the name. Next week one TV channel played 'Lost in Translation'. She was in it, so I decided to watch it. Just guess if I started disliking her after that
:-). I'll help you out. Whenever I walk across the Széchenyi Chain Bridge here in Budapest I think with amazement of her having walked across there in 'American Rhapsody'.
