I have been conditioned to believe that films concerning World War II should be shot in black-and-white. The use of color makes it too pretty. The shadows of gray offer a better sense of the dank miseries surrounding war.
Ferenc Török's Hungarian "1945" looks perfect and feels incredibly genuine, despite having a story that drags at times and perhaps as bad a musical score as I've ever encountered. Scenes that would otherwise pack an emotional wallop are rendered near-comical with a heavy-handedness that would fit better in a poorly executed satire.
A train pulls into a station. Two men dressed in black have arrived in a small town in Hungary after the end of the war. A whispering campaign sweeps the town and the people are noticeably uneasy about the two new arrivals. It reminded me of an American film, John Sturges's "Bad Day at Black Rock," where an investigator is trying to uncover a western small town's secret surrounding the disappearance of a Japanese man.
In "1945," it's a small town in Soviet-occupied Hungary, but the two men from the train are not investigators. They are Orthodox Jews returning to a town from which they were taken during the war. In the town, as in many others, people had ignored the deportation of its Jews. They often benefitting by acquiring the possessions of the deported, including, in some cases, their homes. Now, they fear that the Jews are coming back to reclaim what was taken from them, and they are not in favor of ceding a thing.
Török doesn't reveal the intentions of the two Orthodox Jews. All we know is that they have hired two locals and that they are carrying trunks. As they head to their destination, the townspeople begin to panic. Some begin to hide possessions, and paranoid chatter is running rampant everywhere.
Eventually, of course, everything is revealed and we are left to ponder the behavior of everyone. Török lets it all unfold slowly - sometimes a little too slowly - but most of it works. If not for the overly melodramatic musical moments, I might have thought this a real winner. It's still worth it. Maybe sound-deadening earbuds are the answer?
| Movie title | 1945 |
|---|---|
| Release year | 2017 |
| MPAA Rating | NR |
| Our rating | |
| Summary | A small town in post World War II Hungary attempts to face its past; aside from ridiculously, overly melodramatic music, it succeeds. |
