207. Sunset (Napszállta); movie review

SUNSET (NAPSZÁLLTA)
Cert 15
142 mins

BBFC advice: Contains strong threat, sexual threat

At first, I thought I was out of step and then I read a headline in The New Statesman which stated: "László Nemes’s Sunset fails to capture the audience’s attention".
I have to say, the article was something of a relief. I was not feeling particularly well when I settled down for the movie and had struggled to stay awake.
Thus, I felt that I might be being unfair to its makers to suggest that I found it dull.
I was also aware that many critics had eulogised over the film, claiming it to be, in the words of the poster above, "outstanding", "audacious" and "an entirely absorbing film".
Initially, I blamed myself for not seeing such merits to Sunset but Mrs W assured me that it was hard to follow and not much happens.
Set in 1913, the movie stars Juli Jakab as Irisz Leiter, a young woman who goes for a job as a milliner at the company which had been founded by her family.

Her parents died when she was just two years old and she knows little about their business or their lives.
The staff who now run their former store are suspicious of her motives and, after initial polite discussions, she is sent away by the new owner (Vlad Ivanov).
However, Irisz is jolted out of her job reverie by the discovery that she has a brother of whom she was unaware.
This prompts a new ambition - to track him down and establish a link to her lost past.
Sunset delves deep into the dark streets of Budapest when the city was one of the greatest power bases of a Europe which is just about to be torn apart by war.
But its problem is that while it looks good and goes for unusual production shots (much of the movie follows Irisz with hand-held cameras) its character exploration is superficial.
Consequently, I found myself dropping off rather than being spellbound.

Reasons to watch: It certainly looks good
Reasons to avoid: Style over substance

Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 5/10

Did you know? In the words of Wikipedia: "At the beginning of the 20th century the cultural efflorescence and sparkling energy of abundance and well-being of Budapest rivalled that of Vienna and its café society that of Paris, a belle époque extinguished by World War I."

The final word. László Nemes: "I think that the times at the turn of the century were very interesting in Europe, and they also say something very deep about how human civilisation evolved: the extent to which the desire to build cannot be separated from the desire to destroy." Curzon blog

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