After the spiritual ordeal of his Holocaust movie Son of Saul, and his complex, nuanced drama about prewar Budapest, Sunset, Hungarian director László Nemes comes to Venice with a valuable, interesting picture: another painful, sombre story from 20th-century central Europe composed in his familiar sepia visual palette, and executed with impressive technical control.
Set in the aftermath of Hungary’s failed uprising against its Soviet masters, it is a story about sons rebelling against fathers, but also about coming to terms with (or having to swallow resentment at) the reality of a new order of power – just as the Hungarian people had to come to terms with Moscow’s rule and with finding their proud spirit of independence stigmatised as quasi-fascist. With no support for their self-determination, Hungarians in 1956 were orphaned by the times.
