Bolse vita

This film deals with "identity" - on multiple planes of convergence - personal, community, and country. The film shows the mushrooming of naïve and poor immigrants from Russia in post-89 Hungary, a bridge to reach the dreamy pastures of West. It also deals beautifully with the themes of alienation, communication (or lack of thereof), and survival. And it has a nocturnal feel to it, placing you in an overnight tavern crowded with young characters of distinct artistic temperaments (idealist, washed-out, free-wheeling, opportunists, ready-to-explode, etc), all seeking the key to heaven in their own way, all the while boozing, playing saxophones, fornicating, and trying to interpret each others' foreign tongue with the lens of their agenda.

The film is original on many levels. Released in 1996, based upon the brief window of "openness" in Hungary and other parts of Eastern Europe in 1989, offering contrasting glimpses of the time before and after. Questioning not only the east (Russia), but also the alternative, as proles from Russia, Hungary, and the West mingle in a suspended state, confused about what to do, and how to do it, in a world from which autocracy has suddenly, without preparation, been subtracted. The characters are each sharply drawn, convincingly played, by actors of great talent. In some sense the highly focused lens, following two Russian street musicians (whose musical styles even conflict) through their brief introduction to the middle ground between East and West in Budapest, explodes with the energy of the larger story in which it is enveloped - leaving a strong sense of arbitrary forces leading to resolutions which are anything but "storybook" in tone and sense of closure. Apparently the film grew out of the director's earlier experiences making a documentary about an actual pair of Russian musicians.

This movie is surprisingly good and refreshing. It was definitely a low-budget one, shot in a slightly amateurish manner, pretty bad quality, and still - a pleasure to watch. However, I'm not sure it could be really understood by people who never lived in Soviet Union or or surrounding communists countries. But for us, it's so authentic, it re- creates that atmosphere of Perestroika, atmosphere of liberty and lawlessness which co-exist in Eastern Europe's countries at late eighties and early nighties. There is one more thing I like about this movie: I like it's actors. Some of them are professional, some are not, but they are very authentic and cause real sympathy too.

Hungarians had a difficult relationship with the Russians for most of the last century. After 1945 Hungary fell in the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, and a fierce democratic revolution was crashed by brutal force in 1956. The Soviet troops stayed in Hungary until the fell of the Iron Curtain. The Russian left in 1990 as defeated soldiers of a crumbling empire and came back a few years later as pauper immigrants aspiring to reach the West. These are the premises of this film.

The strength of 'Bolshe Vita' is in the mix of characters who find themselves in the center of Europe in the midst of a world that is changing, although most of them do not really understand how and cannot make their mind what to do with their lives. They are Russian, Hungarian, Welsh, American and are mis-communicating in words while building the puzzle pieces of a landscape of naive hopes that is swapped away by the reality of a change process that does not go in any expected and rational direction. Best scenes in the movie are those where music, and sometimes simple gestures or looks replace words. It's a colorful and deeply human world, confusing maybe just because the characters are so confused.

I confess to have understood less the final documentary scenes of the movie with the violence probably inspired by the Balkan wars. The years after 1996 when the film was made put what happened in those first years of regained and troubled freedom for the former Soviet-dominated countries into a different perspective. 'Bolshe Vita' remains like a snapshot of crushed hopes in a spring that was never followed by a summer the way people expected.

I think this is a significant movie for those interested in the crucial events after 89,when "east met west".The story of 2 russian musicians searching for the "promised land",and another one who has to face the the real facts when he tries to make his way out.Eventualy and accidently he dies after having returned to Budapest,leaving us with a sorrow taste of his unsuccessful struggle.In order to completely understand the meaning of this film and really get its feeling,one should be a man of those times and places:an eastern!