Moszkva tér

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!

It's mighty difficult for me to write a useful recommendation for this movie. Headed home after a party at around dawn I still stop for the odd freak-burger at Moszkva Square or Moscow Square, at the very place that you can see in the movie. And I recognize so much from my own memories from my own high school times, even though the youth of the film are not exactly my generation, it's almost too much to me. The point where this closeness of the film peaked was when I even discovered the guy running this DVD rental place about two minutes from where I live, in a minor role in the cast.

So, for your information, the most important thing to note might be that this film is very authentic. If you want to see the socialist/post-socialist transition for whatever it was, check it out. This is what it felt like, this is us (Budapest, Hungary, at the time). I cannot describe these things in fully rational terms. Perhaps you can. Enjoy the benefit of insight, you're guaranteed to have it.

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.

I just saw this movie in what I think is the only movie theater in Budapest playing it with English subtitles. Situated in Budapest in 1989, is the story of a group of fellow students at a secondary school, and their graduation in the transition times before the collapse of communism. Simple, fresh and and with an optimistic feeling. Maybe a little bit too innocent. It lacks from any long and slow scenes I was expecting from what I think is the first Hungarian film I saw. I won't say is anything brilliant, but I liked this refreshing view of the particular way of the Hungarian.

You'll probably go out of the cinema with a smile on your face.