Sacra Corona

Once there was the great Hungarian film industry....once... We reached the bottom for some time now. So this piece of junk truly deserves nothing, your attention at least. Perhaps we should try to respect the freedom of art and grant those who are talented and professionally acclaimed, like Istvan Szabo (Mephisto, Sunshine). This film is historically inaccurate and profesionally clumsy. 1 out of 10!

After watching The Conquer (Honfoglalás) about the foundation of Hungary, I thought thats the worse costume movie I ever seen. I took into account that it was a low budget film, and some parts I enjoyed but still it was bad. After this, I wasn't optimistic about Sacra Corona at all. Well, I wasn't disappointed at least. Where to start...acting is weak, battle scenes are..well..laughy :) I know, no money to make them spectacular. But even without money you can teach the actors how to hold a sword. Even without money some could learn how to use the camera in battles....ahm..i could continue it for ages. I just pity that in our 1200 years old European history there is many many heroic moments, worthy of a decent film, and I wont ever see one :( This ? Forget it.

The story-line is hardly known for Non-Hungarians. King Laszlo was a Saint of the Catholic Church and his regnum was source of several legends of a hero like those about King Arthur, especially in Transylvania. This kings were descendants of the archaic Hungarian tribal leader, later Royal family Arpad. Why such an accent on religion? Saint Stephen the founder of the modern Hungarian state was an apostolic King. Overall, you need a good command of history to get all the messages not like for blockbusters as Ben Hur or the Gladiator. Many of the scenes played in wonderful old buildings existed that time already and on plots calling the landscape must had been the times the movie played in.

Sacra Corona was a very nice surprise for me after my disappointment over Koltay's previous film the Honfoglalas. The first few minutes seem to be indeed a bit "out of place" at first sight - I didn't know where to put the silent pictures. However, the film becomes more and more exciting as the story goes on. At least it became for me. I was satisfied with the acting too. The three main characters had memorable scenes. Of course the battle scenes could have been mare spectacular, they cannot challenge those of the huge budget Hollywood pictures. (Also the amount of money spent on the making of the movie cannot be compared to the Hollywood movies' with or without government support.) I am happy that this film was made. It was a good feeling to be a Hungarian during watching it.

A lot of people have bad feelings about this film, because it was partially financed by the Hungarian government reigning between 1998 and 2002. As a result lot of critics argued that the money could have been spent on supporting more than one movies with lower budgets instead of just one. Many times the critiques had strong political flavours in them. The above mentioned things are important because I do not think that the rating given to the film by IMDb voters (who are most likely Hungarians) reflects the true quality of the film. It shows how important a strong ruler was in the middle ages and how he must have been approved by the nobility as well. The actual history told by the film proves that even without democracy how necessary it was for even a monarch to gain some kind of legitimacy, and how difficult it was somitimes to gain this legitimacy even amongst the narrow ruling class. It is certainly not amongst the best films I have ever seen, but it gives a pretty good view of the political intrigues of the era, and how difficult it was for Hungarians to adopt Christianity even though they did not have any viable alternatives. I would recommend it mostly for Hungarians and/or those interested in Hungarian or at least Central-Eastern European history from the Middle Ages.