One of the most satisfying genres on page or screen is the family chronicle: think Buddenbrooks, The Forsyte Saga and countless others. Following a family through several generations gives us a sense, if not of immortality, at least of continuity. Its various members, thriving or suffering, form a whole that transcends them into becoming history.
Such a film, all too rare nowadays, is Sunshine, by the noted Hungarian director István Szabó, on whose screenplay he collaborated with the American playwright Israel Horowitz, who also translated it into English. It is the story of the Jewish Sonnenscheins, as they were called in Eastern Europe, with a name that means "sunshine"; having emigrated to Hungary, their name eventually changed to Sors, Hungarian for destiny. Yet under neither name could they bask in steady sunshine or become masters of their fate.
The family story, over four generations, is played out against the clash of opposing forces: Judaism and anti-Semitism. Judaism is sustaining, but also constraining, as when it tries to prevent Valerie and Ignatz, first cousins in passionate love, from marrying. Anti-Semitism is brutally coercive, but the various ways of defying it provide self-definition and honourable pride.
Economic and social stability is achieved by the family thanks to the lucrative secret "Sunshine" tonic, which Emmanuel, the sole surviving son of an explosion in the distillery, brings with him to Budapest. But what with his conservative son, Ignatz, becoming a lawyer and then a judge, and the communist son, Gustave, a doctor, the tonic is set aside. Ignatz marries cousin Valerie despite an orthodox taboo and Gustave's prior claim to her. He rises in power under the Austro-Hungarian empire, which crumbles at the end of the First World War. Gustave goes into French exile, and Ignatz, no longer in perfect accord with his wife and stripped of his position, declines and dies.
Adam, his most dashing son, becomes a champion fencer. To be on the Army team, he must convert to Catholicism. Winning the gold medal for saber at the Berlin Olympics of 1936, he also wins the lovely Hannah, a fellow convert, away from her fiancé, and marries her. But under the Horthy dictatorship, things become harder for Jews and ex-Jews, even for national heroes. When, at the approach of the Second World War, the fascist Arrow-Cross party comes to power, things turn dire. Privately, Adam is torn between his wife and his mistress, the voracious Greta, who, to be nearer to him, marries his brother. Political and personal turbulence echo each other.
Greta, Hannah, Adam perish; only Valerie survives, to become the family's backbone advisor to her favourite son, Ivan, a communist functionary in charge of hunting down ex-Nazis. More of the plot should not be revealed here, as the story heads toward the demise of communism. Everything in the film happened to somebody, though not in the same family. But yes, in the family of man, Sunshine's true concern.
All types of love and adultery, religious faith and bad faith, attempts at assimilation are explored. The different, yet ultimately similar, forms of anti-Semitism are here, the opportunistic changes in people, as well as steadfast endurance. But all this would matter little without Szabó's commanding direction, Lajos Koltai's superb cinematography, Maurice Jarre's insinuating score that cannily leans on Schubert, production and costume design capturing the shifting values of a century, and a masterly international cast digging into dialogue not one line of which, most unusually, need make its speaker blush.
Consider Ralph Fiennes, the distinguished British stage and screen actor, who incarnates members of three generations. With the help of excellent makeup and even better acting, he switches from the coldly intellectual Ignatz to the valiant fencer, irrepressible lover, and gallant martyr, Adam. Pulled apart by conflicting loyalties, he too preserves as much dignity as he loses, straddling all contradictions. Finally, as Ivan, the film's narrator, Fiennes begins as an all-too-human coward, not coming to his tortured father's aid, then turns into a docile aparatchik. But gradually he regains his humanity as he is abandoned by his tempestuous married mistress, Carola, and forced to prosecute his relatively benign boss, Knorr, unjustly accused of treason. In part after part, Fienne's face reveals how repeated setbacks temper a character's soul.
In a fine stroke of casting, Jennifer Ehle portrays the young Valerie, a staunch photographer, and her real-life mother, Rosemary Harris, embodies the ageing and old Valerie. The actors resemble each other not only in appearance, in a similarly life-affirming smile, in a vocal melody that bespeaks gentle tenacity, but also in sheer understated but powerful acting. Canada's Molly Parker is a delightfully impish Hannah, and Rachel Weisz is a fierce, yet also pathetic, Greta. James Frain and John Neville bring fire and embers, respectively, to the young and old Gustave; Deborah Kara Unger contributes some fine shading to the man-eater Carola.
As Knorr, William Hurt does as much for a supporting role as he has for his many leads. Still others, in lesser roles, hold their own. Sunshine may look old-fashioned to Young Turks, but it may just prove the kind of classic that rises above and outlives fashions.
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