"Revolutionary Hold the Step" Redemption by suffering is the motif linking the two levels of meaning in Jancho's film. The sacrificial role of Christ and the reciprocal terror of the civil war (in Hungary it was also, but in short, only a few months in 1919, but managed to pass the stages of both “red” and “white” terror), of course, the images of violence on the screen, of which the film consists almost entirely. Jancho is hardly an adherent of mimetic art, he, as he usually does, chooses a conventional topos of the countryside, the field, next to a village, in order to fit the entire space-time continuum of Hungarian events almost a century ago on it in an hour and a half. I do not know much about the history of this country, but I guess that the events of that time are compressed (with all the lack of narrative in Jancho’s films), but it is also not worth understanding this technique straightforwardly – the director schematically depicts the course of the civil war. For all the similarity of that story with the first years of the Bolshevik state (some come, kill others, and then the survivors return to deal with “some”), there is an important nuance. The Hungarian Communists were so active in nationalization and de-Christianization that their support in the countryside quickly fell to a minimum. Therefore, the “sacrificial” position of the peasantry, forced to experience all the charms of many times during the transition period, makes itself felt on the screen. This is the third force that is not usually an actor of violence, but is involved in it along with other forces.
In the second half of the film, evangelical motifs are aggravated, which are increasingly eschatological to the finale. Again I am afraid to err in Jancho’s peculiar symbolism, but it seems that he passes from Christ to the Antichrist, played by Olbrychsky. The Antichrist is not from the book of John. This is the historical Antichrist, as they used to say, the symbol of the victory of reaction and the transition to fascism. But the director is still more interested in the ontology of evil. He does not personify murders, they are committed by everyone and towards everyone. The key and most ethically risky episode of the film is reading a detailed description of the notorious Chinese execution, a year and a half from the victim is cut off, sawed off and cut off pieces of flesh before she can die (a significant coincidence of the timing of the execution and this film). Jancho is not trying to make a simple move, referring one side of the conflict to evil and the other to good. His murders are constant, rhythmic and emotionless in their own way. If history has gained momentum, it can only be violence, i.e., politics. And the victim here becomes literally everyone just because he is in the position of the object. Yancho’s view from modernity to the past turns out to be minimally biased by private theories, he is occupied not by the ethosization of the political, but by the implementation of the ontological background, which, I repeat, in this case is reduced to evil and nothing else.
7 out of 10