You can’t fool the children of the revolution
There’s something deliciously decadent about going to see a movie at nine in the morning, especially when it’s in a dusty old fleapit like the Cameo (and I mean that in a nice way).
I made a point of catching the Hungarian film Szabadsag, Szerelem. The title translates as Freedom, My Love, but for some reason the English title is Children of Glory. This is telling, because what could have been a story about real people taking part in history ends up as po-faced bombast.
I wanted to love this film because I love Hungary. I lived and loved there for three years of my life. I speak the language. I have many Hungarian friends. So any film about Hungary doesn’t need to do much to get on my good side.
Szabadsag, Szerelem is about a water polo player for the national squad who’s only interested in sport and sex until the student rebellion of 1956, when he falls for a firebrand student who’s only interested in men with a bit of revolutionary zeal.
If this sounds remarkably like Tibor Fischer’s novel, Under The Frog, that’s because it is. Scarily so. Fischer could sue, I reckon. Apparently it came from an idea by Joe Eszterhas, but three native Hungarians are also credited on the screenplay: Éva Gárdos, Réka Divinyi and Géza Bereményi (the latter a stalwart of the Hungarian film scene and with whom I once had the honour of being anthologised).
All comparisons with Under The Frog are to the detriment of this movie, though, as it lacks any of that novel’s multi-layered depth. The Hungarian language is wickedly colourful (I still curse in Hungarian because they are world masters of the unparalleled insult), but almost every bit of dialogue in this film is totally on the nose, and every character works on a single level. Only the mother comes across as remotely complex.
It does manage to move in the end, despite all that, through the primal power of a revenge Olympic final match against the Russians, and that national anthem would move anyone to tears. Not just a magyarphile like me.
