Sunshine Review
by "Harvey S. Karten" (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)May 18th, 2000
SUNSHINE
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
Paramount Classics
Director: Istvan Szabo
Writer: Israel Horovitz, Istvan Szabo
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Rosemary Harris, Rachel Weisz, Jennifer Ehle, Molly Parker, Deborah Unger, James Frain, John Neville, Miriam Margolyes, David DeKeyser, Mark
Strong
Israel Horovitz--who co-scripted this movie--is perhaps better known as a playwright than a filmmaker. "The Primary English Class," Horovitz's off-Broadway play starring Diane Keaton, is set in a classroom where a young teacher is trying to teach basic English to a group of new citizens, not one of whom speaks the same language as another. Misunderstandings develop, though the tone of the entire play is a comic one, but one point is made loud and clear. If you're going to spend your life in an English-speaking country, learn the language. That's one form of assimilation, probably the most important one. But just how far should we go to assimilate into our land of choice if its soil becomes corrupted by the weeds of wickedly extremist politics? This is the principal notion behind the three-hour long epic drama, "Sunshine," which bears an ironic title notwithstanding the fact that Sunshine is also the family name of the brood explored under director Istvan Szabo's cinematic microscope.
"Sunshine" chronicles several generations of the Sonnenschein (Sunshine) family beginning nominally in 1840 and running right up to the fall of Communism in Hungary in 1989. The film is an intelligent portrayal of the struggles of this family--which came into wealth as a result of a delicious alcoholic beverage made with a secret recipe and carrying the family name--against a backdrop of political turmoil in the Eastern European country. We observe the tribulations of the Sonnenscheins through the eyes of Ivan, the great- grandson of the patriarch Emmanuel Sonnenschein, who built the family fortune. Emmanuel (David DeKeyser), a religious Jew, sits at the head of a table embracing his wife Rose (Miriam Margolyes), his two philosophically distinct sons Ignatz (Ralph Fiennes) and Gustave (James Frain), their passionate first cousin Valerie (Jennifer Ehle), and Gustave's roving wife Greta (Rachel Weisz). We are quickly taken to the turn of the century when, at the stroke of midnight, Emmanuelle toasts what he proclaims a new era of peace, justice and toleration.
"Sunshine" turns on several pivotal moments in the political lives of the narrator, Ivan, Ivan's father Adam, and Ivan's grandfather Ignatz--all of whose roles are played by Ralph Fiennes. The first of these is the decision by the Austro- Hungarian emperor's loyal subject Ignatz to advance his career as a judge by assimilating further into the mainstream of his native Hungary. He changes his name from the Jewish-sounding Sonnenschein to the more Magyar-ish Sors. The second is the determination of the judge's son, Ivan, to participate as a fencer in the 1936 Berlin Olympics--which requires him to convert to Roman Catholicism and join the officers' club. The third is pondered by Adam's son, Ivan. Should he continue as a "fully" Hungarian subject, or should he reverse the clock and reclaim his heritage as a Jew?
"Sunshine" would be an involving if somewhat drier film if politics were the only issue on the table. What makes the picture particularly alluring is the way that director Szabo merges the political with the personal. He punctuates the fevered arguments over marriage that threaten to tear great- grandfather Emmanuel's family apart. He shows how Ignatz, his son Adam, and grandson Ivan need virtually to push women away with a stick, so readily do they throw themselves upon the handsome and charming men. He exhibits the fit thrown by the family matriarch, Rose, when her son announces his determination to marry first cousin Valerie.
Whether you'll be intrigued more by the political or by the personal would depend on your inclination. My own pushed me in the former direction. I can understand Ignatz's willingness to change his name to advance his career as a judge, particularly because the chief judge, who actively recruits the talented jurist, explains the requirement with balanced arguments rather than with any form of anti-Semitic rant. I suppose I could empathize with Adam's willingness to go a step further, to convert to Roman Catholicism, for without this sell-out he could not have advanced his own determination to be his country's top fencer. But in a shocking scene in a Hungarian concentration camp, Adam makes a literal life-and-death decision which set my survival wishes agog. Adam's choice--the most heroic in the story--is scarcely believable considering the stakes involved and the ease with which he could extricate himself from a most uncomfortable situation.
Photographer Lajos Koltai takes advantage of several areas of Hungary, including modern Budapest, to order an appropriately European ambience. He also enjoys the advantage of file films, especially those taken from the two world wars to give the project an authentic feel. The 38-year- old Ralph Fiennes effectively shucks off the effete roles with which he's been associated in movies like "Oscar and Lucinda" and "The English Patient" to more than match his most prominent guise--as the evil Nazi commandant in "Schindler's List." Portraying three characters with appropriate changes of hair style and costume, Fiennes comes across forcefully, convincingly, and in one case with heartbreaking poignancy as conflicted heirs to a family fortune whose background as Jews cause them so much unnecessary and irrational pain. Rosemary Harris also shines as the older Valerie, imparting wisdom and kindness to all with the good fortune to be privy to her thoughtfulness.
For those in the audience not already aware of this truism, all totalitarianisms, all blinding intolerance, are faulty, whether they go by the name Communism, Fascism, Nativism, even nationalism. We've toasted in the current century echoing Emmanuelle's hopeful prediction of a hundred-year period of peace, justice and toleration. Will the world, now moving ever more rapidly toward globalization and cooperation, be one of largely uninterrupted sunshine? Or will we fall into the cynical pattern of the last century, so aptly portrayed through the perceptive eyes and ears of young Ivan Sonnenschein in this remarkable, epic film?
Rated R. Running Time: 180 minutes. (C) 2000
Harvey Karten, [email protected]
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