Pleasant Days

For some reason, so-called `honest' films are quite popular with young Hungarians these days. However, this movie mistakenly suggests that drifting young people have no choice but to drift in life and always choose the wrong way, so no honesty here. This is the type of movie that would be financed by the Hungarian state these days, because you can sell it partly as artsy, partly as `a movie that explores the boundaries of human life and concerns deep social and moral issues'. Well, if the director's intention was to shock (`let us all face reality' and all), he definitely failed, unless he thinks that in the era of hardcore porn and Hollywood B-movies nudity and superfluous violence are shocking. Sorry, I simply do not feel sympathy, sorrow or pain for stupid characters (involved in a stupid narrative), especially if they are sketchy, shallow, or more like empty. The dialogues are crap - believe me, nobody talks like that, ever. This language was invented specifically for this film (not a new phenomenon in Hungary), so it cannot be honest in this sense either. With a little malice, I might add that the amateur acting was so artificial that it drove me crazy after twenty minutes. There was nothing in this film that grasped my attention image-, story-, character- or otherwise. This movie has nothing to it, nothing at all. As I come to think of it, if this is Mundruczó's profound reality, he should probably have made a film about nature and animals.

This movie was in th 27th International Movie Festival in São Paulo, (Brazil). It seemed at first it would have a plot. A woman who would buy a baby from a stranger to get money from her boyfriend. But it got lost in nudity, violence and profanity. Besides, poor directing leaves the audience bored if not angry (many scenes have not a steady camera shot, it shakes as the cameraman moves, becoming more difficult to follow). Not that is has anything to follow. There is no plot. Many scenes have no dialog and, when it have, it has no use. Most of the times, it features the leading actor captured smoking cigarettes in different places, where nothing else happens. The characters don't have any personality nor aims. This is really a waste of time.

It may well be. Especially if you compare the characters in this film, their actions and aspirations, with other film from the soon to be new "E.U." countries, and even with current European Union countries.

The novelty, of course, is that the film and its subject are Hungarian, not exactly the flavor nationality of the decade, unlike the Ukranians, Romanians, Poles, Czechs and former Yugoslavians, whose suffering and desperate situations are more common in art house or festival movies like this one.

It is definitely a rough film to watch. But if you've been to a few film festivals the last decade, and seen a couple of movies about the former "Eastern Europe", you won't freak out. The film makers obviously did try to up the "shock" ante a bit with this film, since few things, if any at all, surprise audiences anymore. And the sex and violence may be scandalous to the still fairly recently censor-free Hungarians.

But I wonder whether films such as this one are viewed in their own countries. How many people have seen or will see "Elephant" in the US, or saw "Czesc Teresa" in Poland? These films are mainly for export to festivals, and ultimately "artsy" cable TV film channels like Arte and Canal +. In any case, an interesting film with (pardon the cliché but it does really apply here) a "universal" theme.

Not too long, or too "foreign" - as the current lead comment reads. Whoever wrote this last comment anyway-"A good foreign film" - is implying anything not American is foreign. Little does she know that Americans (and I am an expatriated one) regard Canadians as foreign, and American films are by definition "foreign" in Canada.

So, what does this contradictory, though strangely NOT really unusual naive comment mean? Well, it confirms what I said. This is a good film which even some high school sophomore seeing one of her first "foreign" films in Toronto liked. This, in spite, as she added that it "even had subtitles."

Given the film's unusual origins and uncommon milieu, if it can please a "normal North American" viewer, with little or no "foreign film" exposure, and it also pleases more discerning audiences with greater understanding of the film's milieu and social conditions, then it is probably a film worth seeing.

Hungarian journalist say Kornél Mundruczó's film is likely to Pasolini's and Fassbinder's best movies. It shows the conflict of three young Hungarians, who have no choice in life. Maya has a child, but sells it to Kata. The father of the baby is Péter's best friend. Péter's boss is the lover of Maya. Péter, Kata's brother falls in love with Maya. A situation that can not be solved. Raw conflicts and raw agressivity rule the scene. A very honest work.

I don't know why the English title is "Pleasant Days". Is it tongue in cheek?

The film seems incomplete. It has the feeling of being put together in a desperate hurry. There are some interesting scenes well photographed but they don't go any where and you are left wondering why indeed they were included. The story line is pretty weak. It's really a disjointed study of Peter an ex-jail bird and his unstable relationship with others. He smokes like a chimney which is understandable because his future is so insecure. His only real pleasure in life is sex.

But the actor who plays the lead role does have a certain charisma which rises above his miserable existence. There are a few light-hearted scenes but one in particular I remember is his "bath time" scene when he jumps into a washing machine for a thorough cleansing. I have to admit I was on tenter-hooks believing that someone might inadvertently switch on the machine!. There are frequent sexual episodes and constant reference to genital parts which are written into the script either to shock or to suggest that the characters have sex constantly on their minds.

I watched the film to the end but remained in a state of complete hopelessness for the characters and as for Krisztian the baby around whom much of the action revolved I could see no future in life for this little Hungarian.