My Way Home

As its focus is restricted to a single character, and with so many similarities to Miklós Jancsó's later masterpiece [The Red and the White], I could only view this as a lesser work in comparison. By itself, it's still effective and well-shot, with the only real problem in an ending that overstates the emotion too heavily.

Early Jancso finds him slowly transitioning away from his formative influences into his own style. It has been compared to Antonioni--presumably for its use of 'psychology as landscape' and an emphasis on enigmatic mood over character or narrative--but Jancso's concerns aren't the consequences of modernity but rather the universal quality of humanity that allows us to make connections regardless of our differences. It's Jancso's most hopeful film from his heyday and it's beautifully shot.

Creates a sense of space in which events move between foreground and background or happen simultaneously, allowing a feeling about the constraints of war but also a kind of freedom of movement liberated from ordinary life, as well as a sense of the uncanny character of all human encounters. In this way, and in the stripped-back dialogue reducing everything to the bare minimum, it is similar to THE RED AND THE WHITE, but in this earlier work the intentions are simpler and more conventional.