balagesh

This film slowly began to creep close to my heart, and although it ultimately brought some disappointment, I will hold fond memories of it.

At the beginning, I could hardly believe my eyes-was I really seeing Lisbon? An English book publisher, well past his prime, decided to settle there, all the while, driven by his Russophilia, he keeps returning-relentlessly-to the East, where he enjoys the generally high level of cultural literacy. The two ends of the world/Europe meet in the classic observation: Portuguese is the most beautiful Slavic language. (Credit for that goes to my dear teacher, István Rákóczi. - Not that an Englishman would care about local languages...) And then, a heated speech suddenly brings a twist to his life. I almost felt like I was in one of Saramago's novels. Like when, for example, a proofreader suddenly gets a wild idea. (The History of the Siege of Lisbon) Sean Connery, unfortunately, was too restrained for me. At times I even felt the role was slipping off him. I saw the character as a heavy-drinking, wordy intellectual who is prone to shyness in the real world. In his performance, this was less convincing. There was also some wavering in how the story unfolded. It was as if they had let it run freely without limits, then suddenly realized it and cut the scene short.

All in all, I was happily daydreaming while watching the outdoor shots-only occasionally disturbed by the story.

This exchange encapsulates everything the '90s film revolution brought to the world of dialogue.

I always end up talking about Tarantino, but Kevin Smith is just as important in this regard-perhaps even more so. Unlike much of fictional storytelling, his characters are teenagers and young adults, which gives his work a distinct realism as it documents the spirit of the era.

The weightlessness of youth, the pointlessness of stepping into adulthood-or even the utter futility of it. Randal is the perfect example of the former; Dante, more of the latter.

Whichever path you take, the common thread is that all that remains is self-entertainment drawn from pop culture-spiraling into the wildest trains of thought which, as in this case, unfold with surprisingly elegant arcs and become structural parodies of serious philosophical discours.

I had been meaning to watch a Hungarian film for a while, but in truth, this one perfectly captured the Central European atmosphere. In Hungarian, we usually refer to the first year of mourning as "gyászév" with less emphasis on widowhood itself. Because of this, the title misled me somewhat-I expected a story of personal growth. But there is nothing Americanized about this film. There's none of that notion that true greatness lies in not just surviving but thriving even on thin ice, in constantly and compulsively turning toward even the faintest ray of sunshine like a sunflower, no matter the circumstances. Instead, it presents an unexpected death and the confrontation with it-not through grand words, but through the simple actions of everyday life.

From the natural landscape of the Carpathian Basin, we also get a glimpse of notaries making empty promises while disregarding everyone, bureaucrats coldly reciting rulebooks with utter indifference, and even postal workers who use their tiny bit of power to make others miserable. Within the family, there's a father who is utterly dismissive and always making cutting remarks, a seemingly kind but deeply toxic mother-in-law-and, of course, a few positive figures as well.

The great strength of this film lies in its authenticity. There is no grand story, but it succeeds remarkably in documenting the painful indifference of our everyday lives-the way we fail to show even the most basic respect for others, and how, as a result, it becomes that much harder to find respect for ourselves.