Fényes szelek

Is there any long-take director that is capable of orchestrating such complex onscreen movement with a truckload of actors at any given time? What separates Jancso from other long-take practitioners is the sense of levity in the general camera movements: there is nothing weighty or laborious about them. Jancso is about action rather than stasis; and paradoxically enough, he often uses action to imply stasis. Confrontation is a great explication of his unique style.

Long roving takes serve a kind of quasi-theatrical experiment that seems to be exploring the potentials and the risks associated with the 1960s youth movements from the perspective of direct experience of previous movements. The abstracted form of the political laboratory constructed here does not really succeed in transcending the milieu and time from which it derives, even if it does harbour critical intentions concerning the difficulties of avoiding tendencies towards dogmatism and terrorism.

A naturalistic musical. Though much of it is told through song and dance, there's no invisible orchestra and no leaps from mimetic to operatic form and back. On first impression, our revolutionary heroes are like a realistic West Side Story troupe or even the hippie kids from Hair, bringing color, sound and youthful joy into a mopey, grey-clad conservative school, and seeking "only to debate". But what lies behind their chants of liberty and democracy? Perhaps, a clever allegory.