borzadani

Karanténzóna is a 2022 Hungarian sketch-film, containing 5 short stories, all set during the lockdown of the corona pandemic - and each comes with a surreal, absurd twist, in the style of Twilight Zone.

The stories are fairly diverse.

We have:

• a long-term married couple struggling to remain sane with each other,
• a single mother homeschooling her daughter and taking care of her ill father,
• a lonely old lady whose belongings keep disappearing,
• a young infuencer and her ambitious boyfriend starting their new life together
• and a man choosing total isolation in the solitude of his apartment.

While not every story is equally captivating, they all very well encapsulate the absurdity, the banality and the horror of the situation a lot of people were forced to in in the past few years. Also when take into consideration that the movie is a work of a few independent artists, without any big names or millions of dollars in the budget, it's all the more fascinating. The technicalities are all stellar, it all looks and sounds splendid.

If you have a HBO Max, look no further and watch it! Great achievement!

While it's certainly not the in-depth exporation of the teenage cruelty fueled by the actual FOMO phenomenon, it's still a very interesting, realistic depiction of the new lost generation of the late 2010s.

The film brings up many topics, that would deserve a movie of their own (cyberbullying, physical bullying, the untouchable upper class elite, rape, youtube prank culture, lack of empathy, a youth without any substantial vision for the future etc.), but it doesn't really go in for any of them, which leaves a bit of empty space behind. They're all very relevant and imoprtant issues, but it's more of a mosaic of problems Hungary's upper middle class teenagers face in the capital, and no coherent exploration of the underlying causes.

However the film is extremely well made, the use of mobile and computer screens is clever, the more traditional shots are gorgeous, and the acting is superb. As far as I know, the kids were not professional actors, yet it doesn't show at all. Everything is very natural, from the dialogues to the body language, it's a rare thing when filmmakers manage to stay on the ground with youth-culture. Also, András Stohl, while his presence is brief, wasn't this good for many years.

The party scene was brilliant, I've felt all the emotions you could imagine, from fun to disgust, fear and rage.

It also could've run for another 15 mins. It would've been more beneficial to see the actual consequences of the main character's actions, but the ending was satisfying nontheless.

The film is set in Northeastern Hungary, late August, 1849. Hungarian Chief of Staff Artúr Görgei surrendered to the Russian army, thus the war for independence from the Austrian Empire is over. But news spread slowly in the 19th century. Barnabás, a young, soon-to-be priest travels across the war-torn country in search of his brother's batallion, in hope that he could persuade him to return to their family before the Austrians or the Russians capture them. He eventually finds a small group of surviving members of this company, hiding in the forests, unaware of the capitulation, but the brother is badly injured. Barnabás liest to the freedom fighters about his history during the war, and gets into a romantic relationship with a nurse, his brother's also attracted to. The story is not extraordinary or anything, but serves its purpose, namely establishing a historical period never before seen on screens. It's truly all about authenticity, and the re-creation of a forgotten chapter in our history. The props, the costumes, the sets are all amazing, they all feel real. The acting is phenomenal, on a level I rarely see in Hungarian films. No theatre voices, no pretty faces. Everyone looks and talks like an actual human being from an other century. It's raw, it's naturalistic, there are no great ideals or heart-lifting moments here. A slow-paced, athmospheric journey to the past and maybe to the depth of a soul. I can't recommend it to everyone, most people will find it boring, uninteresting or underwhelming, but for me it's easily one of best Hungarian period piece of all times.