Homecoming (1945) – 1945 (2017)

Directed by: Ferenc Török | 91 minutes | drama | Actors: Péter Rudolf, Bence Tasnádi, Tamás Szabó Kimmel, Dóra Sztarenki, Ági Szirtes, József Szarvas, Eszter Nagy-Kálózy, Iván Angelusz, Marcell Nagy, István Znamenák, Sándor Terhes, Miklégénkelyünkely, B. gados

August 12, 1945. A train arrives in a village in the Hungarian countryside, an event that initially causes little commotion. The day is dedicated to the wedding of the town clerk’s son, preparations are in full swing. The first drinks are served, the bride secretly cheats again and the town clerk plays the popular boy, an act that no one falls for. But then news comes from the station: two Jews have arrived and have taken the road to the village with unknown luggage.

From that moment there is great unrest in the village. Who are those Jews? Have they returned from the camps? More importantly, are they coming to claim their homes and belongings? It turns out that right after the Jews were betrayed and rounded up during the war, the villagers rushed into their belongings like vultures. With the obsequious town clerk in the front.

The Hungarian feature film ‘Homecoming (1945)’ takes place entirely during this day. We see how the inhabitants are getting more and more anxious, how guilt and shame come up and finally we also see who the Jews are and what they are coming to do. All these things unfold slowly but with iron logic, with the script working towards a final that is as inevitable as it is beautiful.

As a drama, ‘Homecoming (1945)’ is more than successful. The story is captivating from start to finish and the film has a lot to say about guilt, forgiveness, abuse of power and greed. The glimpse into Hungarian village life, petty and generously doused in booze, is as amusing as it is believable.

It is a pity that the film was shot in black and white. The village is heated by the arrival of the Jews, by the threat of violence, by the heat of August. That sweltering would undoubtedly have come into its own in the overripe colors of the Hungarian summer.

A bigger problem is the very emphatic music, a combination of traditional Jewish sounds and otherworldly electronics. That electronic music regularly clashes with the images, as if you are pasting a cheerful synthesizer tune under a medieval spectacle. There is little room for silence anyway, the radio is on everywhere and when the radio is silent, that annoying music starts playing again.

‘Homecoming (1945)’ is strong enough to compensate for these minuses, although you wonder how this drama would have been in color and with the sounds of the countryside as an authentic sound setting. We will probably never know.