Brave Hungarian Waterpolyist and His Heroic Girlfriend Making historical films about the atrocities of the Soviet Union became fashionable. Former superpowers with imperial ambitions or just small countries with offended psychology do not get tired of filming new works on this topic – they are famous for the cinema of Poland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, the Baltic countries and many others. “Children of Glory” is an opus on this theme of the production of the country of Magyars.
Modern Hungarians, compared to other Europeans, are quite tolerant of Russians. However, this lies only on the surface, since this creation of cinema only proves that there are grievances, settled deeply and forgive them while the Hungarians are not ready.
Of course, the events depicted in the film, other than tragic, the language simply does not turn. Soviet tanks in the city, the lack of independence, fierce fighting in the streets with the insurgent resistance movement – all this really happened, and to deny it would be simply stupid. The film depicts this rather strongly: different moods among the people (conformists against resistance), the fear of the local population of the power of Soviet tanks (there was something to be afraid of), the intimidated government, not ready to come to the aid of its people, the betrayal of the United States and European allies, who chose to close their eyes to the situation in Hungary and care about the situation on the Suez Canal (when it comes to oil, the priority of human life, unfortunately, falls). And everything would be fine if you watch the film only from this point of view and close your eyes to what happened before.
But the Hungarians for some reason prefer to remember only resentment against the Soviet occupiers. Although it would be nice to remember that Hungary supported the Third Reich and the Nazi party of brave Magyars zealously supported Hitler. It is not bad to remember what happened in the Carpathian Ukraine. It is even better to mention Hungary’s participation in the attack on the USSR as part of Operation Barbarossa. But films are not shot about this, talking about this, and even more so shooting films on this topic, is simply not accepted.
Returning to the events depicted in the film, I can note that for some reason it is not shown how the Hungarian uprising was suppressed not only by Soviet fighters, but also by Hungarian government troops. It is not entirely clear that the methods of the security workers were the initiative of the government, not the Soviet Union. And if you close your eyes to all this, you get such a coherent picture of the heroic Hungary, oppressed by the Soviet Union. However, the truth is that the bloody invasion was not so much the invasion of Russian tanks, but the totalitarian regime of Hungary itself, created by them. Do not hang all the dogs in the USSR, the country was ruled by the Hungarians, and they themselves fiercely tortured and killed dissenters.
Abstracting from history, I should note that the love story is shown in the best traditions of Hollywood with a search for beautifully looking shots and an impressive picture. Also selected are the main characters - a brave girl who lost her family to the Communists, and her lover, a brave waterpole player, ready to leave the team on the eve of the Olympics for the freedom of his country. This, of course, is beautifully shot, but as often happens in Hollywood (after all, the creator of the film, being a Hungarian, spent many years in the Land of Dreams), the story reeks of fake and stamping.
In my opinion, the director was especially successful in sports episodes. It’s really great, the only thing is that I wouldn’t link the unsportsmanlike behavior of Soviet water polishers to politics. Personally, I think that in a heated fight for a medal, nerves can give up and aggression can manifest even if there is no political component. Nevertheless, the film vividly shows how this small victory and gold medal was the road for the bloodless and abandoned proud country of the Magyars. For this, I put a big fat plus on the film.
But despite my strengths, I don’t think I’ll ever want to watch this movie or recommend it to my friends. Enough with anti-Soviet, it is better to watch less subjective films.
6 out of 10