Moszkva tér

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.

The movie takes place in 1989 when I was 15 years old and thanks to my clear memories, I must admit that the director managed to catch the atmosphere of the period. It was a time of big changes, the communist system collapsed, a "great" Hungarian leader died while a very important historical character, Imre Nagy, executed after the 1956 revolution, was finally given the honor of being buried. The setting is also excellent, the movie really looks as if it was shot in 89. For foreign viewers however this film doesn't say much because it's full hidden of jokes that only we understand, for example when the boys are sitting in a cab singing the horrible Opus song Life Is Life and at one point in the lyrics they sing Levelet Kaptam Life, because in the 80s nobody knew what the singer says there. What I missed was the lack of the depth of the characters and the plot wasn't very strong either but we mustn't complain because Moszkva Tér is a massive standout in contemporary Hungarian cinema.

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.

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.