My school rented an entire cinema last Friday, so we could see the movie together. I read reviews of it before, but I didn't expect it to be this bad. I had a bad feeling before going to the cinema, because I thought, that while most movies, that are filmed after books are made in 10-15 years this was made in 4, with problems on the set slowing down filming.
It's about a Jewish boy in Hungary, who is taken to Auschwitz and Buchenwald and other camps during the end of WWII. It's hard to tell where he is most of the time, because we only get the boys narration telling us about it, but he never says why he was taken there, which is really frustrating.
The acting if fair, but there are some awful performances like Gyuris neighbor Annamária. I don't know how the director aloud that performance to be in the film. Most of the support cast are good, but most of them don't really have anything to do, or say, they just look like they were meant to be really moving.
The direction is the worst part of the movie, in my opinion. I never wanted to see a dynamic picture, but this was too much for me. The theme of direction is that we get a lot of episodes divided by fade ins and fade-outs. This is incredibly boring and monotonous and makes it hard to watch. Especially when most of the scenes are 1-2 minutes long and sometimes they have no end, or beginning. (Spoiler) Like when Gyuri is at the camp with tents in it. One night its heavily raining and Gyuri comes out from under the tents and goes towards the washing-troughs. It takes him 1 or 2 minutes to get there, because he always slips in the mud. This is a little boring after a while, so one can't help but wonder, why in the world is he going there. It's raining so it can't be that he wants to wash himself. So we wait patiently for him. And just as he reaches his destination what happens? Fade-out...(Spoiler off) We never get to know why he went or what happened there. Frustrating really. And there are some more scenes like this one. No beginning, no end, no meaning, no affect on the story, it's just there.
Another stupid thing about the scenes is that they mostly end with the camera taking a shot of Gyuris face. Most of the times he looks really sadly/seriously at something or is just staring into the "great beyond" (like Ben Affleck does, but this kid is better at it). Now this also gets boring after a while. And we never see what he is looking at or those sort of things. we just get to have his face. And this takes up at least a half hour of the movie.
Another flaw is that the movie is just too beautiful. You know, I never thought Buchenwald was such a pretty place. Most of the scenes are shot like this. Very picture-like, they are like small compositions (maybe thats why people don't move too much). And the fact that the colors are mostly black, pale-white and decay-yellow also add to the feeling that this movie is not life-like. Although I thought the book was good because of that fact.
The music is bad. I love Ennio Morricones music, but here it's just plain old bad. Too romantic... bad.
The dialogs aren't a strong point either. Imre Kertesz's novel was great, but after this movie it's clear that he is no screenwriter. Awkward sentences and words that don't really belong there.
The fact that there are some downright stupid things about it,(Spoiler) like when Gyuris is half-dead in a pile of other dead people, we see everyone naked, except Gyuri. It's not that I want to see the kid naked, but this sort of thing is just too dumb.(Spoiler off) These things make this movie seem a whole lot worse than it could have been.
After Schindler's List there isn't really anything shocking about the film, but that would be alright because the objective of the picture should have been to look at the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of a kid, from another point of view than we have had already seen many times. But the movie fails in that aspect too.
All in all, I am disappointed. This movie adds nothing new to the world of cinema. There is nothing outstanding about it. This movie could have been so much better. But it messed up up. Too bad. Maybe in a 50 years we'll get a good adaptation.
It's about a Jewish boy in Hungary, who is taken to Auschwitz and Buchenwald and other camps during the end of WWII. It's hard to tell where he is most of the time, because we only get the boys narration telling us about it, but he never says why he was taken there, which is really frustrating.
The acting if fair, but there are some awful performances like Gyuris neighbor Annamária. I don't know how the director aloud that performance to be in the film. Most of the support cast are good, but most of them don't really have anything to do, or say, they just look like they were meant to be really moving.
The direction is the worst part of the movie, in my opinion. I never wanted to see a dynamic picture, but this was too much for me. The theme of direction is that we get a lot of episodes divided by fade ins and fade-outs. This is incredibly boring and monotonous and makes it hard to watch. Especially when most of the scenes are 1-2 minutes long and sometimes they have no end, or beginning. (Spoiler) Like when Gyuri is at the camp with tents in it. One night its heavily raining and Gyuri comes out from under the tents and goes towards the washing-troughs. It takes him 1 or 2 minutes to get there, because he always slips in the mud. This is a little boring after a while, so one can't help but wonder, why in the world is he going there. It's raining so it can't be that he wants to wash himself. So we wait patiently for him. And just as he reaches his destination what happens? Fade-out...(Spoiler off) We never get to know why he went or what happened there. Frustrating really. And there are some more scenes like this one. No beginning, no end, no meaning, no affect on the story, it's just there.
Another stupid thing about the scenes is that they mostly end with the camera taking a shot of Gyuris face. Most of the times he looks really sadly/seriously at something or is just staring into the "great beyond" (like Ben Affleck does, but this kid is better at it). Now this also gets boring after a while. And we never see what he is looking at or those sort of things. we just get to have his face. And this takes up at least a half hour of the movie.
Another flaw is that the movie is just too beautiful. You know, I never thought Buchenwald was such a pretty place. Most of the scenes are shot like this. Very picture-like, they are like small compositions (maybe thats why people don't move too much). And the fact that the colors are mostly black, pale-white and decay-yellow also add to the feeling that this movie is not life-like. Although I thought the book was good because of that fact.
The music is bad. I love Ennio Morricones music, but here it's just plain old bad. Too romantic... bad.
The dialogs aren't a strong point either. Imre Kertesz's novel was great, but after this movie it's clear that he is no screenwriter. Awkward sentences and words that don't really belong there.
The fact that there are some downright stupid things about it,(Spoiler) like when Gyuris is half-dead in a pile of other dead people, we see everyone naked, except Gyuri. It's not that I want to see the kid naked, but this sort of thing is just too dumb.(Spoiler off) These things make this movie seem a whole lot worse than it could have been.
After Schindler's List there isn't really anything shocking about the film, but that would be alright because the objective of the picture should have been to look at the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of a kid, from another point of view than we have had already seen many times. But the movie fails in that aspect too.
All in all, I am disappointed. This movie adds nothing new to the world of cinema. There is nothing outstanding about it. This movie could have been so much better. But it messed up up. Too bad. Maybe in a 50 years we'll get a good adaptation.