Even those who are outside Hungary and do not know the great writer Márai (although his 'Embers' became a bestseller lately also in the English and German speaking countries) may find this film interesting albeit a bit slow-paced for some people's taste. The great writer emigrated to the US after WW2 and lived in exile until his death. He never wrote anything in English but, as he put it, the Americans 'took him in'. He lived there with his wife, Lola in modest circumstances, totally isolated from his mother country and audience. For those, who do not know the writer and his life story I recommend this film for the great portrayal of an elderly couple who live in their memories and reach toward the end. They would like to die together but this is unviable. One of the finest lines was this: "Dying starts when you no more feel that it is impossible that you're gonna die." For the Hungarian viewers, who read this, I found it a bit curious why the Hungarian conversations were consistently subtitled in English whereas the occasional English conversations were not translated into Hungarian at all. Could it be a concept ?
