1945

Yesterday I spent a rainy afternoon at the Broadway seeing a compelling foreign film called 1945.  In a rural village in Hungary just after World War II, two Orthodox Jews get off a train and arrange for two large trunks to be taken into the town by wagon.  News immediately spreads throughout the village and everyone reacts with alarm, wondering who they are and what they want.  We slowly learn that many of the villagers were complicit in denouncing a prominent Jewish family before the war and that many profited, unethically, from their arrest.  Intermingled with these frantic scenes of chaos are long shots of the two men slowly following the wagon into town which is a bit menacing as the villagers await their arrival.  As guilt plagues the villagers, with catastrophic results for many of them, we learn the innocuous reason for their visit.  It reminded me a lot of High Noon because the town is anticipating, not gunslingers, but two strangers walking into the town while nervously peering out from behind lace curtains as events unfold in real time.  This is, ultimately, a profound portrayal of guilt and how you cannot escape from the consequences of your actions forever and I am sure that I will be thinking about it for some time to come.  The cinematography effectively uses high contrast black and white to create unbearably beautiful images and the jarring score does much to add to the tension.  It is in Hungarian, and some Russian, with English subtitles and many of the characters look and dress alike (particularly the women) so I had a difficult time following the action at first but I found the images on the screen to be riveting.  I would definitely recommend this film.