Change Your Image
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Reviews
Macerás ügyek (2001)
Aboriginal lucidity
Hajdu Szabolcs's first feature is a homage to the fascinating environment he grew up. A place where the blocks of flats fulfill the role of guardian angels and the rolling marbles represent both magic and gambling. Like dozens of miniature globes; the playgrounds are woods, oceans, and endless deserts. The world depicted in Macerás ügyek is a precise, clear-cut microcosm, with the rules only known by its inhabitants: actors and those people that once lived there.
Some of the best moments of the work are: a hilarious western parody scene between Zsoli and Brigi, and later Imi and Zsoli; an almost deadly wrestling event in a sauna; and a very intimate moment taking place at dawn.
Take the movie as a journey to your long forgotten past - wherever it took place - and you will surely enjoy this film a lot.
Festen (1998)
Real men versus actors - no longer a question - both.
I firmly believe that some of our most revealing experiences take place in places and times we least expect. Going to the cinema is rarely considered an activity for spiritual improvement. (Some of us do believe in it but afraid to emphasize it in public. Those of us who have witnessed The Celebration may not be so timid anymore.)
If something or somebody want to have a spiritually interpretable impact on me, they need to be credible. Being credible requires reality. Finding reality - in its purest sense: where the things encountered are things deprived of disguise - in a movie is, in most cases, totally unexpected.
Not in The Celebration. From the very beginning to the very end, the characters take you to a stage where all you need is guts to see what is really around you, what really matters in life. And all this beautiful disclosure is the sole product of the actors' meticulous acts of unfolding every little reality atoms. This is perhaps because each and every word, each and every wrinkle has its own story, and significance - or not: just like in life. One of the most challenging tasks would be to decide whether the movie is so credible because the actors are real masters of their vocation or because they do not play, just exist for the sake of pumping your heart, opening your eyes, and making you really happy and sad for being part of reality.
In my version, the actors worth mentioning are: the cast, the crew, and digitcam - For they all contributed to the success of the film as much as a human being possibly can.