I've Got a Golden Ticket

I just got back from 1945 @ Village 8. I'll admit that one of the reasons I wanted to see it was because it was very Hungarian. Hungarian writer, director and setting. 

It had some other things going for it, though. It was black and white. It was part of the Jewish Film Festival in several cities, Louisville amongst them. It had subtitles. It was, for lack of a better term, a serious movie. To me, that means it was a movie which would provide me an opportunity for growth spiritually or intellectually. So even though my usual movie date was not available (though I'm going to ask her to see it with me this weekend if I have the opportunity to get out), and even though I don't like to go to movies by myself these days, I went for it.

And it was just stunning. A little bit of a slow start, but once I had settled in it shifted to interesting as the mystery behind the characters' motivations was slowly revealed, and then it became mesmerizing. There were a couple of scenes that made me laugh. There was a really sexy scene in which no nudity was shown. And there was one scene which made me cry pretty hard. But most of all, it made me think: We have got to stop judging other people. We have got to stop assuming the worst of everyone. We have got to start talking to people with whom we disagree. And we have got to start listening to what they have to say.

Funny, I watched something or other on one of the "news" shows yesterday . . . it might have been that open forum on everyday racism thing . . . and someone was saying how a police chief told him that 90% of police calls could be avoided if people would just talk to their neighbors. 

We used to do that.

Hell, I grew up living next door to a racist who sold drugs out of his house, but we got along without shouting at or shooting each other. The closest he got to going after us was when he got into trouble with the cops and he figured that one of the neighbors had dropped a dime on him, and he walked out on his porch and shouted to the world, "I'm going to sell my house to the biggest, blackest nigger I can find!" My mom had come to see what the fuss was about and he turned and saw her in the doorway after his proclamation, and he said to her, "You probably won't even care." My mom answered, "You're right." And that was that.

Those were the days.

Whilst looking up some data on 1945 I happened upon some of the financial information, and, as I and you suspected, it was not pretty.

This film was actually first released in February of 2017, and to date has made $504,016 according to Wikipedia,  $669,845 according to IMDb . . . and its budget was $1,700,000. Meanwhile, Avengers: Infinity War, which was released April 23, 2018, has to date earned $1,916,500,000. Oops, waitaminute. In the time it took me to look that up and type that sentence it made another $500,000. (Well, just guessing, but it's not unlikely, is it?) And I enjoyed Infinity War, for sure . . . but 1945 is so much better, so much more powerful, so much more . . . that it's not even of the same species as Pozzo. 

I've been searching for a video release of the film, but so far I haven't been able to find it anywhere. I also looked for some work by the writer Gábor T. Szántó, on whose story "Homecoming" this film was based (and who co-wrote the movie), but came up with nada there as well. Fuck. If only I'd known at a younger age how important Hungarian art would become to me, I'd have started studying the language then. I suppose I still can, of course, but at my age the roar of time's winged chariot is so loud that I can hardly maintain a coherent thought for more than a minute at a time. Still, it would be nice to be able to read some of the books that I can't find in English. Or, for that matter, to watch some of my favorite movies without having to look down at the sub-titles every few seconds.

ANYway, if this movie comes within a hundred miles of you, you should seek it out. Updates when / if they happen.