Many great European directors and a few Americans have delved into Naziism and the Holocaust. But few if any have examined the sweep of history in modern Europe as Istvan Szabo does, so passionately and movingly, in Sunshine.
A three-hour novel on film, this multigenerational epic traces the rise and fall of a Jewish family from the shtetl to a new era of freedom and democracy in Hungary. The film's title Sunshine is an English translation of the family's original name, "Sonnenscheine," and also refers to the source of their success in Buda-Pest, an elixir called "A Taste of Sunshine."
As in Szabo's most famous film, Mephisto (the first part of a trilogy that also includes Colonel Redl and Hanussen), Sunshine digs into the forces that drive men into betraying themselves in the name of ambition. In this case, the screenplay by the Budapest-born director and the American playwright Israel Horovitz focuses on a family that turns its back on its Jewishness, even changing its name to Sors. This decision deeply wounds Emmanuel Sonnenscheine, the patriarch and founder of the Sunshine Tonic company. It also gives his children, and their children, the illusion that they are somehow immune to the virus of anti-Semitism that always hovers over Hungary but grows to murderous virulence with the rise of Naziism.
But as Emmanuel's sons and stepdaughter, his grandchildren and great grandchild live through the century -- with Ralph Fiennes impressively shifting in looks and styles in playing a pivotal member of each generation -- Sunshine also chronicles the political shifts in Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian Empire gives way to the victory of Fascism over Communism, only to have Communism inflict its own reign of terror on Hungary. Though democracy at last liberates the people, most of Sunshine draws a darkening landscape of a country dominated by repressive forces, from aristocrats, to militarists, to Stalinists.
Szabo's personal reflection on his country's history is not without faults. Its dialogue is sometimes too pointed and rhetorical. And championship fencing -- the prime occupation of Fiennes' second character, Adam Sors -- makes for some rather tedious passages. It is sometimes unclear what year it is, or how much time has passed, especially in the period when Emmanuel's two sons, Ignatz and Gustave, and his adopted daughter, Valerie, age from youth to middle age, without seeming to change.
The one character who survives every terrible change in Hungary is Valerie, played at first by Jennifer Ehle (the Tony winner for The Real Thing), then by her mother, Rosemary Harris (nominated for a Tony for Waiting in the Wings). Valerie, a photographer, records the passage of time and the life of the family in still black-and-white images. Szabo also weaves in newsreel footage, sometimes integrating his actors into the real moments, not always seamlessly.
In his triple roles as a rising lawyer and judge, an Olympic gold-medal fencer and a Communist witch hunter, Fiennes shows his range. As Ignatz, in the first generation, he is stiff and restrained, suggesting a man eager to move ahead and assimilate, the self-conscious and pragmatic monarchist. As Adam, in the second, he looks like Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and comes across as driven, thoughtlessly thrilled to convert to Christianity, but dashing and ultimately defiant and brave, unable to believe that an Olympian can be treated as a Jewish victim. As Ivan, in the third generation, callow and nervous, he is filled with guilt until he emancipates himself during the Russian invasion of Budapest.
Ehle's Valerie, who seduces the frightened Ignatz, then marries him, projects both sexual playfulness and idealism. She also exhibits the most winning of smiles. And Harris expresses the heart of the Sunshine clan in her gradually aging portrait of the older Valerie. The strong international cast also showcases William Hurt as a shrewd apparatchik who becomes a martyred Communist Jew, Ivan's mentor and victim. David de Keyser draws a persuasive and affecting portrait of Emmanuel, the founding father. Rachel Weisz, Molly Parker, Deborah Kara Unger, James Frain and John Neville stand out in a huge and excellent cast.
The production designs by Attila Kovacs and the photography by Lajos Koltai combine to create a vivid re-creation of the times and places, from the paneled family dining room to a coffeehouse, a towering synagogue, an ornate Roman Catholic Church. And Maurice Jarre's score reinforces the world of Hungary, then and now, with richly orchestrated themes that call up the romance of the torn cities on the Danube.
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