The Annunciation

This is a joint review by Skykid, Ikarus and myself made up from our different opinions of the movie where the result is a mixture of what we think of it.

Name: The Annunciation

Original name: Angyali üdvözlet

Year: 1984

Country of origin: Hungary

Director: András Jeles

Genre: Drama

Duration: 100 min

Prologue:

I must confess. When I first watched this film late one evening I didn´t understand much. But then I watched it again in broad daylight and also read some about it and after that I understand much more. ”The Annunciation” is a movie based on the play ”The tragedy of man” written by the Hungarian writer Imre Madách and was first published in 1861. The play itself is often compared to the 17th century English poet John Milton´s ”Paradise lost”. Even if the film is entirely performed by children, it is very seriously done indeed.

Plot summary:

The story begins in the garden of Eden where Adam (Péter Bocsor) and Eve (Júlia Mérö) are tricked by Lucifer (Eszter Gyalog) to eat of the forbidden fruit, and thereby getting knowledge of good and evil.  For having committed this sin, they are then cast out from Eden by God. Now Adam reminds Lucifer of his promise to let him know ”everything”. Lucifer then lets Adam fall asleep and have a dream of the future history of mankind and in every part of history he lets Adam be a known character, starting with Miltiades in ancient Athens, then Tancred in Byzantium, Kepler in Prague, Danton during the French revolution in Paris, and in the end a nameless man in Victorian London. Guided by Lucifer, Adam is taken through the horrors of human history. In the end Adam wants to jump from a cliff to spare the world from mankind, but is stopped by Eve.  And God tells Adam that his task is only to ”strive on and have faith”.

Performance and dialogue:

Going through this film is not that easy since it´s a bit longish for what it wants to accomplish. The dialogues are quite interesting, the words are whispered rather than said out loud. The style of the dialogues are quite interesting too- it is like watching a visual poem.  There is a phrase that is repeated many times during the film and if you paraphrase it one would get a pretty good idea of the film – ”We exist and yet we don´t exist”. The movie is quite popular, but one could always say about it ”It exists, yet it doesn´t exist”. Another quotation from the film is ”Everything is beautiful, good and rightful. Only people consider one thing to be rightful and another thing unrightful.” If you think about it, there is so much wisdom in those words. Some say that this film is kind of unusual and spooky – yet it really shows what the human kind has become in a way. In that sense the movie could be seen as quite an interesting journey through the history of mankind. Others say that they can´t catch the overall message of it.

Cinematography and sound:

Even since its release on DVD (2007), the picture quality is not that good, with bleak colours, pale and sometimes unsharp.The sound is not top quality either.  It simply doesn´t impress much. Some scenes also seem a bit overcasted. Most of the scenes in the film are quite surreal, and it must have been quite challenging for the young actors to understand them.

Recommendations:

Some say they don´t miss this flick in their collection, others that it´s an interesting though challenging movie. With almost all the cast being children it´s quite unusual in respect to its rather serious topics and should therefore perhaps have its special place somewhere among the other coming of age movies.

             

Abandoned (Torzók)

Young Aron finds himself abandoned at a bleak orphanage by his recently divorced and despondent father. The ultra-strict nature of the institution comes as a complete shock to the boy, and he must frequently endure beatings both from the staff and the other orphans. He finds solace in a trusted relationship with his young classmate Attila. And that special bond, which leads to his own sexual awakening, gives him the courage to lead his peers in revolt.

Wins and Nominations

Fateless

This directorial début by the cinematographer Lajos Koltai is an adaptation of the Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész’s novel about a young Jewish boy’s deportation in 1944 from Budapest, his struggle to survive in the concentration camps, and his subsequent surrealistic homecoming. Koltai steers away from dramatic climaxes and paroxysms of violence, but he cannot help tipping the balance with the very lushness of his filmmaking. Both the composition and the color of the images are stirringly beautiful, but they feel loaded with symbolism and sentiment: an emaciated man swaying with exhaustion during an interminable roll call appears to be experiencing a kind of transcendent ecstasy, like Joan of Arc on the pyre. Such loaded moments—as well as Ennio Morricone’s insistent score—undercut the deadpan irony and detachment of the screenplay, also by Kertész; nonetheless, the young Marcell Nagy, as the boy, is dispassionate, intelligent, and quietly affecting. In Hungarian, English, and German.

Original title: ”Sorstalansag”.