For some reason, so-called `honest' films are quite popular with young Hungarians these days. However, this movie mistakenly suggests that drifting young people have no choice but to drift in life and always choose the wrong way, so no honesty here. This is the type of movie that would be financed by the Hungarian state these days, because you can sell it partly as artsy, partly as `a movie that explores the boundaries of human life and concerns deep social and moral issues'. Well, if the director's intention was to shock (`let us all face reality' and all), he definitely failed, unless he thinks that in the era of hardcore porn and Hollywood B-movies nudity and superfluous violence are shocking. Sorry, I simply do not feel sympathy, sorrow or pain for stupid characters (involved in a stupid narrative), especially if they are sketchy, shallow, or more like empty. The dialogues are crap - believe me, nobody talks like that, ever. This language was invented specifically for this film (not a new phenomenon in Hungary), so it cannot be honest in this sense either. With a little malice, I might add that the amateur acting was so artificial that it drove me crazy after twenty minutes. There was nothing in this film that grasped my attention image-, story-, character- or otherwise. This movie has nothing to it, nothing at all. As I come to think of it, if this is Mundruczó's profound reality, he should probably have made a film about nature and animals.
Review of Pleasant Days
