Moszkva tér

First of all, I'm Hungarian. And I just happened to be a student at the time of the fall of communism. I think that this movie has captured it all. Every scene reminds me of something, every scene is a hit. The dialogues are perfect and the acting is surprisingly good (for newer Hungarian movies!). The last line of the movie sums up the whole feeling of this era.

Best movie, lots o' fun!...but only if you have the same experience as me. You have to be a young Hungarian to enjoy this movie. Otherwise, you just won't get it. You'd think it's slow, clumsy, low on moral etc.etc... But that's the way we were!!! A direct hit. Go see it, it will help you see things from another point of view!

On Saturday I managed to find a 'mozi' that showed this film with English subtitles. Fortunately I would say, because this is a nice film. I was a little ill that day, but I found myself running after tram 6 at Margit híd (Margaret's bridge) in the freezing cold to get to Moszkva tér (Moscow square) where I live.

As you may guess, I'm not from Hungary, but it was nice to see this film and get a glimpse of Hungarian youth around the transition time in 1989. Of course, it's hard to judge for me if their image is correct, but I felt it was. We see high school students in and after their exam time, showing no interest whatsoever in what is going on around them, except for when it concerns material stuff.

A nice moment is the (assumed) bed-scene in Paris during the television-broadcast of the news of Kádár's (the communist leader) death. Afterwards the Moscow Square Cowboy returns, to live his life in McDonald's in Budapest. The iron curtain dropped, the West opens and the youths flee out.

Only movie made since 1989 to really be able to explain the end of Communism, and they did so by showing it through the eyes of 18-year-olds who didn't really understand it themselves. The comment about Csalamade is extremely profound. It described the crappy nature of things back then in those days, which, none the less, we've become nostalgic for. And most all of things described, really did happen: The exam questions were leaked. Young Hungarians got their first chance to travel through Western Europe on those forged train tickets. And a Hungarian graduation ceremony really does look like that. Director still had the same sense of social accuracy in his latest film, Season, but he missed the profound statements he gave us in Moskva ter.

This is a great movie about the Budapest and Hungary at the "turn of the systems". The movie was made a decade after the change, yet it presents an incredible level of details about the life and people of the 1990's. It presents well how students spent their free time and weekends, the type of parties they attend, movies they watched and teachers they had in the secondary school. It also presents the true event about the leak of the final, graduation exam questions (the audit truth is that those exam questions were leaked by the son of a politician (social party member - later prime minister). This leaking resulted that the final history exam results were canceled all over the country in that year.

This film is excellent in so many ways it is difficult to contain my emotions about it. I'm an American who speaks Hungarian well enough to follow the film. This film does not have English subtitles on the Hungarian DVD release, which is an incredible shame, because it is priceless. It illustrates youth apathy and confusion under both the communist system and during the post-communist transformation better than any film I have seen. Moreover, unlike Goodbye, Lenin!, with an intricate and contrived storyline that takes 2.5 hours to unfold, this film runs more like "La Haine" and/or "City of God (Cidade de Deus)" without the violence. It follows some teen friends around Hungary, etc., while the transformation comes about. It is absolutely priceless and should be mandatory viewing in any social science classes on post-socialist transformation -- if a version with English subtitles can be secured. Stellar, stellar, stellar film!