onetwothreefour
Bluelight Crew
*tears hair out*
this film was soooo frustrating. it's fantastic. it's, at times, poignant, eye-opening, and compelling. but it has so much potential, only to wander off on some unrelated tangent so often, apparently forgetting about whatever it was meant to be saying.
this film, an adaptation of a nobel prize-winning novel, shouldn't have such a problem. its setting - world war 2 hungary and poland - has an infinite amount of material, the book was obviously good (though i haven't read it), the actors here are serviceable throughout, and the cinematography is beautiful (not to mention), yet the film just seems to meander on, never sure whether to make its point with authority or not.
take the ending, when gyuri returns home to find his city partially in ruins, strangers occupying his apartment, and unfeeling authorities hassling him for tram tickets; he says that he died in the war (figuratively, in the concentration camp). and he practically is dead: he can't feel anything, he doesn't want to see his mother, he cares little about life anymore. clearly leaving at fourteen-and-a-half for germany's 'labour camps' has had a profoundly disturbing effect on him, and one wonders if he might ever recover. this isn't something addressed often in films about ww2 (most often we have a 'we can move on, we're strong' kind of ending, and i don't begrudge it, but it is brave to go in the other direction), so i was glad to see it. but then, like so many other aspects of the film, there's a 180 degree turn, and it just doesn't add up. gyuri's voiceover tells us that he's feeling positive; he wants to become 'an engineer or a doctor,' like his mother said he could. there are opportunities everywhere, he says.
now i'm sure that's all true, but it doesn't fit this movie at all. gyuri might well turn out okay, and end up becoming a sucessful doctor or engineer or fucking gymnast for all i care, but the point that had been made just thirty seconds earlier was that the cruelty of the concentration camps had ruined this chance for the moment; stolen his innocence, stolen his opportunities, and above all else stolen his sense of humanity. asked, on the tram, what he felt now that he was home, gyuri replied, 'hatred'. and there's no fairer response, so why the reversal?
nonetheless, this film is damn good. it's just the fact that it could have been so much more which makes it so bloody frustrating.
this film was soooo frustrating. it's fantastic. it's, at times, poignant, eye-opening, and compelling. but it has so much potential, only to wander off on some unrelated tangent so often, apparently forgetting about whatever it was meant to be saying.
this film, an adaptation of a nobel prize-winning novel, shouldn't have such a problem. its setting - world war 2 hungary and poland - has an infinite amount of material, the book was obviously good (though i haven't read it), the actors here are serviceable throughout, and the cinematography is beautiful (not to mention), yet the film just seems to meander on, never sure whether to make its point with authority or not.
take the ending, when gyuri returns home to find his city partially in ruins, strangers occupying his apartment, and unfeeling authorities hassling him for tram tickets; he says that he died in the war (figuratively, in the concentration camp). and he practically is dead: he can't feel anything, he doesn't want to see his mother, he cares little about life anymore. clearly leaving at fourteen-and-a-half for germany's 'labour camps' has had a profoundly disturbing effect on him, and one wonders if he might ever recover. this isn't something addressed often in films about ww2 (most often we have a 'we can move on, we're strong' kind of ending, and i don't begrudge it, but it is brave to go in the other direction), so i was glad to see it. but then, like so many other aspects of the film, there's a 180 degree turn, and it just doesn't add up. gyuri's voiceover tells us that he's feeling positive; he wants to become 'an engineer or a doctor,' like his mother said he could. there are opportunities everywhere, he says.
now i'm sure that's all true, but it doesn't fit this movie at all. gyuri might well turn out okay, and end up becoming a sucessful doctor or engineer or fucking gymnast for all i care, but the point that had been made just thirty seconds earlier was that the cruelty of the concentration camps had ruined this chance for the moment; stolen his innocence, stolen his opportunities, and above all else stolen his sense of humanity. asked, on the tram, what he felt now that he was home, gyuri replied, 'hatred'. and there's no fairer response, so why the reversal?
nonetheless, this film is damn good. it's just the fact that it could have been so much more which makes it so bloody frustrating.
