IN 2015 the Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes astonished the world with Son of Saul, a drama about a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. It won an Oscar, the Grand Prize at Cannes, and just about every other award going. Sunset is what Nemes did next. It is the kind of film that would probably never have been made without its predecessor winning all those prizes.
Set in Budapest in 1913, Sunset breaks all the rules they teach in film school. The story is difficult. It begins as a mystery and builds from there, with the screenplay refusing to throw the audience clues. Adding to the sense of disorientation are voices off and the general cacophany of a busy city during a heatwave. Then there is the film’s too long by half an hour length. This is the opposite of accessible movie making.
Yet for all that, Sunset is quite the most intoxicating film I have seen in a long time. It is also astonishingly beautiful. Shot on film, every scene is a painting come to life. As for that bamboozling story, all becomes clear eventually.
Juli Jakab plays Irisz Leiter, whose parents once owned a famous hat shop in the city. Now they are dead and she, all alone in the world, is looking for a job there. Despite, or perhaps because of, her connection to the place, the new owner and his staff do not want her around. At several points in the film, Irisz is greeted as the proverbial bad penny, the last person anyone wants to have around. What has happened to make her so? Nemes, who co-wrote the screenplay with Clara Royer and Matthieu Taponier, is not about to give up his secrets just yet.
Irisz is approached by someone with a letter for the Leitners’ “son”, Kalman. This is the first she has heard of any brother and she resolves to find him, thus beginning her odyssey into darkness. “Blood will flow this week,” a stranger tells her. Something wicked this way comes, but what?
Jakab is terrific as the preternaturally bold Leiter, who refuses to be distracted from her quest. Even as the film seems to descend into confusion, she is reason to keep watching. This is filmmaking as spell weaving, and you will be very glad (hopefully) that Nemes tried.
From one side of the cinematic extreme to the other now with Godzilla: King of the Monsters (12A)**. Directed by Michael Dougherty, it’s the usual creature feature with Godzilla once again rising from the deep. Only this time he is not alone. Kudos to the filmmakers for giving maximum monster action for your cinema buck, but the dialogue has enough cliches to choke a giant lizard.
Sunset: GFT, till June 6; Filmhouse, Edinburgh, till June 13. Godzilla is on general release
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