The cinematography is professional, beautiful and atmospheric... the costumes are beautiful..
But unfortunately this is not enough... if everything else is weak.
The weakest is the acting, directing and scriptwriting!
The story is unfortunately stupid and boring, and there is no real conflict, even though the film's trailer is campaigning about how much danger the hussars are in and what patriotic actions they perform. The purpose of the trip is to bring back a glove... the hussars fight without real emotions and passion... winning a bet, not the real defense of the homeland.
The characters have no real personality, no concrete motivation, characterless characters with whom you can hardly identify. We get bored of them, we don't get excited for them.
The biggest problem with the film is the completely unfilmic, theatrical sound of the actors' speech. When will Hungarian film production finally stop this huge mistake? Professional actors learn speech technique in college... let them stop this mannered, theatrical, terrible style of speech... the role they are playing becomes unreliable if the actor speaks in this mannered, overdramatized style. Those speech teachers who think this is the right acting style should be fired from the college. And those directors and sound engineers who think this kind of voice and acting style is right should be urgently sent for a hearing test.
The text put into the mouths of the characters in the film, their speaking style hurts one's ears because it is emotionless or overdramatized, but by no means a normal speaking voice. And the fact that the actor speaks to the viewer and speaks to the viewer is simply total amateurism.
This film is a shining example of all the problems of Hungarian filmmaking:
- there is no proper scriptwriting, dramaturgy, text, character development, development of motivations,
- the actors' excessive theatrical style of acting and speaking style spoils the entire atmosphere and watchability of the film.
- the professionalism of the director and sound engineer is questionable if these amateurish mistakes are not noticed.
