The Restless Hungarian

This is a deeply moving film, and while it's a family story, specific to its own time and circumstance, it touches a universal nerve. In addition, the filmmaking is masterly. There is remarkable archival footage that never hammers the viewer with trite or clichéd meanings. Also remarkable are the sites (or remnants) on three continents of the Weidlinger family's landmarks. And most remarkable for me are the eloquent reenactments of family scenes: like rooms in a dollhouse with a minimum of decor, they convey the maximum of psychic distress. They're mysterious, in some cases almost mystical. In fact, the entire film has an aura of mystery and beauty.

The documentary was, for me, a transformative experience. It is both personal and universal, touching key turning points in 20th century history as well as the hopes, fears and aspirations of the filmmakers family. There is also here a story of intergenerational healing - of reaching back into the suffering experienced by parents and grandparents and acknowledging those experiences in a way that they, themselves, could not articulate.

Do not watch this film is you are merely looking for entertainment. Do watch it if you are open to a profound experience. It is unlike any other film I have seen.

This film captures the uncertainty and disembodiment caused by abandonment; losing faith that one deserves a healthy relationship, making one's way alone in the world, and searching for connection. The story is told through Tom Weidlinger's quest to understand his father, Paul Weidlinger's, life and motivations. I was struck by both Tom and Paul's resilience under extreme adversity, their creativity in finding solutions, their dedications to their craft, their reach for beauty, and the dysfunction that wreaked havoc on the people around them. In addition, I gained an intimate insight into the culture and events that shaped the world leading up to World War II. The soaring glimpse of the Joy of Space through the images of the buildings that Paul brought to the world truly inspired me.

Occasionally a film comes along which covers a multitude of topics and yet weaves them into a coherent and compelling story. What starts as a reflection on a personal crisis quickly explodes into a layered exploration of the history of a century, seen through the eyes of fascinating people form three continents and many walks of life. While it stays firmly on the tracks of an engrossing family history, its many sidings visit such topics as war, avant-garde art, the holocaust, architecture, bohemian life, immigration, adventure and travel, mental health and identity. And while all of this sounds like too much to fit in one story, each of these gets its due attention through rounded and skillful direction, so that the film seems to end only too quickly, in spite of its feature length.

In this riveting hybrid documentary, filmmaker Tom Weidlinger pursues his quest to truly know and understand his father, Paul, a successful, Hungarian-born structural engineer who helped build many of the great architectural works of the 20th century. At the heart of the enigma the film attempts to resolve is the issue of Paul Weidlinger's hidden Jewish identity, which Columbia University film professor Annette Insdorf references as a "growing sub-genre of Holocaust cinema." Employing a wealth of archival material and interviews with his father as well as those who knew him in Hungary, France, Bolivia and the U. S., Tom Weidlinger documents his father's perception of himself as a self-invented, creative intellectual, radically distanced from traditions - Jewish and otherwise -- despite the wartime suffering of his Hungarian Jewish family. Was this a flight or a rejection, a disguise or mere disinterest in his origins? Did his metamorphosis contribute to his constructing an edifice around his emotional self? And what, finally, was his grown son supposed to do with this discovery?

Dramatic reenactments of childhood memories, enhanced by the filmmaker's thoughtful, introspective narration, help to explore the space between Paul Weidlinger's public persona, his factual accomplishments and his emotional impact on his family. Ultimately, the film ponders how one integrates the infinite complexity of a parent's life -- including their impact on our own.

Building on the research for his 2019 book, "The Restless Hungarian: Modernism, Madness and the American Dream", the film is just as informative but far more emotive, yielding a deep personal payoff at its exquisitely narrated end.