{"id":103583,"date":"2025-08-28T16:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T16:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/103583\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T16:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T16:53:09","slug":"orphan-review-laszlo-nemes-fable-of-resentment-and-rage-in-post-uprising-hungary-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/103583\/","title":{"rendered":"Orphan review \u2013 L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Nemes\u2019 fable of resentment and rage in post-uprising Hungary | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the spiritual ordeal of his Holocaust movie Son of Saul<\/a>, and his complex, nuanced drama about prewar Budapest, Sunset<\/a>, Hungarian director L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Nemes comes to Venice with a valuable, interesting picture: another painful, sombre story from 20th-century central Europe composed in his familiar sepia visual palette, and executed with impressive technical control.<\/p>\n

Set in the aftermath of Hungary\u2019s failed uprising against its Soviet masters, it is a story about sons rebelling against fathers, but also about coming to terms with (or having to swallow resentment at) the reality of a new order of power \u2013 just as the Hungarian people had to come to terms with Moscow\u2019s rule and with finding their proud spirit of independence stigmatised as quasi-fascist. With no support for their self-determination, Hungarians in 1956 were orphaned by the times.<\/p>\n

However the orphan of the title is not in fact an orphan; his mother is still alive. Andor (Bojtorj\u00e1n Bar\u00e1bas) is an angry, lonely teenage boy who idolises the memory of his father, Hirsch, who went missing during the second world war but who might still be alive somewhere. Andor still conducts imaginary conversations with him, and his mum (Andrea Waskovics) works in a grocery store. But Andor\u2019s life is turned upside down by the appearance of a brutal, boorish butcher (played by French actor Gr\u00e9gory Gadebois) who smugly \u2013 and odiously \u2013 seems to be claiming some sort of right over Andor\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n

The awful truth about who his father actually is dawns on him and Andor is convulsed with resentment and rage, especially as he uncovers evidence that just a few years previously this butcher was cruel to his \u201cother\u201d family. But as his mother says to him: \u201cThe more you hate him, the more you like him.\u201d The whole situation is complicated by the fact that this man, however maladroit and often obnoxious, has moments of affection with Andor and is sincere enough \u2013 in his way \u2013 about building a life with his new family.<\/p>\n

However, there is something stolid and at times monotonous about the way this is presented to the audience \u2013 as ever with Nemes, the force of gravity is increased, making everything 20% heavier and denser. And Bar\u00e1bas\u2019s performance is frankly actorly rather than real in his incessant frown of righteous resentment. It\u2019s a minor movie from this always interesting film-maker.<\/p>\n

Orphan screened at the Venice film festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the spiritual ordeal of his Holocaust movie Son of Saul, and his complex, nuanced drama about prewar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-103583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}