Miklos Jancso: Winter Wind (Sirokko)
Jancso is already in my pantheon of genius directors, all the more from coming out of the backwaters of Eastern Europe under Communism; I can't think of another of his contemporaries that even approaches him. The Round-Up is a brilliant, taut exercise in Kafka-esque consequentiality, and The Red and the White is simply one of my favorite films of all time.
Winter Wind is not as narrative as The Round-Up, nor does it have the formalized brutality of The Red and the White, but it is from the same period as them and qualifies as a minor masterpiece. The historical background, only given at the very start of the film, is that between the two world wars, Hungary is providing assistance to Croatian nationalist separatists who wish for an independent Croatia separate from Yugoslavia, which in 1929 was made a dictatorship under Serbian King Alexander. The film takes place on the Yugoslavian-Croatian border, where Hungarian-supported Croatian terrorists are making raids into Yugoslavia and conducting assassinations and such. Our hero, Marko, returns from a raid and spends the entire movie in a Hungarian safehouse with compatriots and Hungarian officials. He distrusts them all intensely and interrogates (or kills) them, until...well, his fears are well-founded, that's all I'll say.
Marko is defined by two characteristics alone: his nationalism and his paranoia. Any other trait has been completely subsumed into the service of these two aspects, and he is monomaniacal in his obsessions. (The one funny moment involves his hatred for his compatriot's pet dog, which has been irritating him all the time in the safehouse. A new terrorist trainee shows up and Marko, to test his marksmanship, tells him to shoot the dog.) He separates himself from all the other political figures on the grounds that no one is as pure in their fervor as he is. Everyone else is using him and his cause.
He's right. There is never a moment where he is taken aback or surprised; his comprehension of the situation is total, as is his paranoia. The only people to whom he shows a degree of trust are the wholly powerless: a handful of Croatian children whom he trains to kill and an abused prostitute sent by the Hungarian government to service him. (He's not interested.)
The movie is not about development; like The Red and the White, it's a visceral portrayal of a situation. The brilliance of it lies in how Jancso communicates the abstract conflict between the idealists and the realpolitik sorts with pretty much no explicit political speech. It is conveyed through their mannerisms, their stances, their confidences and their paranoias.
Tarkovsky didn't like Jansco too much:
On Friday we went to the Dom Kino [House of Cinema] with Larissa and Araik and saw one and a half films by Miklós Jancsó: Hungarian Rhapsody and Allegro barbaro.
We didn't last until the end and we left. Simply awful — no taste, pretentiousness, ambiguity. Trite and without an iota of talent. A rabid, incompetent Paradjanov disciple.
— Kevin · Nov 7, 08:41 PM · #