Reseñas de la crítica

The script’s twists are a little predictable and some might query the way the Jewish characters are essentially noble ciphers. But, given the rise of the far right in Hungary at the moment, this is a timely tussle with a nation’s collective sense of shame.

Török could easily follow a rote suspense blueprint, but, fiery climax notwithstanding, 1945 is more concerned with implication than escalation; it's a story laid in negative space, its richest moments marked by silence and structuring absences.

The director and co-writer, Ferenc Török, and his cinematographer, Elemér Ragályi, shot the film in a black and white that feels baked into the images. The look conjures a tinderbox atmosphere that turns cathartic when one key setting actually does burst into flames.

Török manages to squeeze in pleasing detours into period detail, as in one shot that pans up from a woman’s churning feet to the Singer sewing machine on which she is working. . . . The resultant sensation of uncomfortable prying underlines the boiling suspicions that power the plot.

Absorbing and finely wrought, “1945” is not perfect. It oversimplifies Istvan’s motivation for issuing an accusation against a friend. The modernist-style score by Tibor Szemzo is more distracting than atmospheric, especially when it riffs on Max Bruch’s widely used composition for Kol Nidre, a Yom Kippur prayer that seems inappropriate for this particular context.

The fractured rhythm of 1945 and the desolate aesthetic are engrossing, but like those plumes of smoke, the film doesn’t linger. Török’s technique is impeccable, and individual shots and scenes are imbued with tremendous beauty, yet somehow he fails to carve out a unique identity.

The black-and-white cinematography is stunning and the acting is impressive—for all the tumult, the film, directed by Ferenc Török, has a powerful restraint.

In an unabashed expression of Old Testament-model justice, the day of the strangers’ visit coincides with the wedding of Istvan’s son. Török may occasionally employ such on-the-nose devices, and take unnecessary extra measures to make us dislike Istvan, but his portrait of cowardice and communal collapse is incisive and compelling.

Like compatriot director László Nemes’ “Son Of Saul,” the gripping period drama offers a fresh, intelligent cinematic approach to a difficult topic.