A hortobágy legendája

This made-for-television movie comprises a number of short stories about heroic persons living on the puszta. The characters are all very flat and essentially all "real Hungarian" persons are supposed to be good, contrary to all others(Russians, communists) who are "evil". The movie makes the impression to be made by amateurs, especially as the sub-stories are being commented by a narrator, which is a form of movie- making that is at least outdated and very unattractive to watch. Nevertheless, this production is heralded as a milestone for many Hungarians who long for politically influenced culture. Hopefully for Hungarian cinema, this trend will one day come to an end and movies will be made for artistic reasons and value again, and not as pure nationalist political propaganda. The images of Hortobágy puszta nature are beautiful; that may be the only reason to consider spending your time on this production.

First of all, I'd like to point out, that I respect the will in the filmmakers, to even bother to do anything, when seemingly they have had to work with the lowest production values possible.

And I mean "Brazilian TV-soap" level. It looks like they tried to make something decent and serious, but with this kind of equipment, it's hard to do better.

And with this kind of source material, it's almost impossible. See, the string of short stories take place on the vast Hungarian Puszta, where we follow the heroic struggles of the honest, hardworking and simple folks, who lived there, about 150 years ago.

In case you're not Hungarian, you probably wont understand what's wrong with this. See, it's like the French had made a low budget movie about their famous revolution, in which they would't say anything particularly new, but would present it in the most clichéd and simple way possible. "The poor city folks defeat the evil king". Try presenting this synopsis with a straight face.

The Hungarian equivalent for this, has actually made it to the TV screen recently, and it's called "A hortobágy legendája".

The actors try very hard to seem convincing, but the harder they try, the worse they look in this low-budget uber-patriotic kitch-fest.

Okay, maybe I went a bit over the top. It's not THAT bad of a straight-to-TV film, but it's just way too cheap to be taken seriously, yet, it still acts way more serious then it should