6:3, avagy játszd újra Tutti

Very good, ironic film with excellent humor and message.It contains events from the Hungarian history, you may need to know it to some extent to understand the film. It is about a soccer game, when Hungary played with England and won 6:3. There is a man who falls asleep and goes back to the 50's, when the game took place. He knows that Hungary will win, but nobody believes him. He follows the game at different places: at a pub, at the barber, at a store and so on. You must know that Hungary was occupied by the Sovjet under the 50's, and everybody was afraid. When this man appears, people begin to wonder who he can be. The police will take him. Some people starts to follow him. He gets to some intellectuals' home and tells them that the game will be won and that a revolution will take place in 1956. The intellectuals start to follow him as well. There is no specific end, the whole film is a big process which never ends, but is very entertaining.

Having grown up in 1950's Hungary (I left during the '56 Revolution), I remember very clearly the great 6:3 win against England, the first time the English national team had ever lost on their home field. I also recall the political period, though I was a child, with my parents drawing dark curtains while we huddled over the big radio, trying to listen to Radio Free Europe.

This film manages to capture beautifully both the excitement about the Hungarian soccer team and the drabness of the economic and political situation. The story begins in contemporary Hungary when a garbage man is asked by an attractive young woman to clean out a house she inherited from her grandfather. To his amazement, the room is filled with soccer memorabilia, featuring that grand national team of the 50s, starring Puskas, Kocsis, and his (and my) favorite--Hidegkuti. When he finds Hidegkuti's game jersey, he puts it on and literally swoons back in time to the day of the 6:3 match. It is also the day of his birth, and what he knows--the final score of the match--is combined with what he does not know--his birth mother's identity.

The film then stays in the past, in turn hilarious and somber, as Tutti runs from radio to radio to listen and anticipate the historic moments of the game. In the process, he makes friends and enemies, indirectly exposing the meanness and stupidity of the Rakosi communist period, especially its informers. In a touching moment, Tutti proudly begins to sing the Hungarian National Anthem, not realizing that national pride during this period has been forced underground. Without missing a beat, Tutti switches into the Internationale, the unifying song for the proletariat. At times surrealistic and always entertaining, 6:3 is a wonderful trip into the Hungarian past where one would hardly want to visit much less live!

The makers, especially Péter Tímár wanted to invoke the atmosphere of the communist dictatorship of Rákosi era lasted from 1947 to 1956. I think they've managed to reconstruct it very much: if you read the history books about the era and newspapers from that times, if you listened to your parents' and grandparents' tales, you will experience the similarities are shocking. The main character (Tutti - Károly Eperjes) is excellent, Eperjes, acting an eccentric, but likable crank is in his royal spirits.

The film is a great work with a good story and great points. An absurd, tragicomic and fictive, but historically exact memoir from the early fifties.