"Az ötödik pecsét" or "The Fifth Seal" is a Hungarian movie from 1976, which means that this movie had its 45th anniversary last year and this also means that the time when it is set is much closer to the time when this got made than the now is to when the film got made. Only to put things into perspective. I think it is a given to say that this film is in color and the days of (unintentional) black-and-white in movies were already gone by then. People today consider this one of Hungary's finest films from the 1970s. Some even think it is among the best films ever from this little Eastern European country. I cannot really agree as you can see from my rating. But first things first: The film runs for under two hours in any case and if you ignore the closing credits, then it is not much longer than 100 minutes. The writer and director was Zoltán Fábri, today long after his death probably still considered among Hungary's most known filmmakers, even if István Szábo is mentioned before him. Fábri has been in charge of over 20 films though, some of these considered classics in Hungary. This one here was picked as Hungary's official Oscar submission back then, but did not achieve the nomination. No huge surprise, but if you look at how films set against a similar background won Hungary the Oscar twice, it maybe can be called a small surprise, especially because Hungary had a solid record before that and the country's films were nominated twice in the slightly over a decade before this one. As for the cast, due to the film's age, you will not find too many people in here alive anymore in 2022. This includes the director who at least reached a decent age, but if you look at the actors at the center of it all, almost all of them went far too early. One who is still alive is Gabriella Kiss though, but she was also really young back then. She plays the stunning young woman with dark hair at one of the protagonist's homes. This is pretty much the middle part when the protagonists do not share the screen, but we see them return home and also see how they have this riddle in the head that one of them brought up at the pub right before that. This almost felt like an intermission that comes up after the long sequence inside said pub and what happens immediately afterwards when they reunite in the pub, but are taken away then not much later.
There is almost no comedy at all to this movie. One minor inclusion where some people laughed a bit in the pretty full room (it surprised me how many came to see this one and it was not even the only screening) was when we have one character bring home a big piece of meat and he really wants to tell the woman there that it is not for her. That is all though. Other than that, it is a serious film and especially towards the end it is all about survival. I guess the depiction there was the reason why many people gave this film such a high rating. Maybe I would also give it a higher rating on rewatch, but what I saw yesterday makes it pretty clear for me that I have almost no intention to watch this film again anytime soon. Maybe ever. May sound harsh, but I just did not find it any good or convincing. It was not too credible what the riddle from early on did with the men and how it stayed in their heads for such a long time apparently. That it almost changed their lives. If in a good or bad way, everybody must decide for themselves. I almost found the scenes more interesting that had this young rising officer with light hair together with the more experienced general and the latter teaches the former a lesson about how to deal with political prisoners. That murdering them right away is not always the best solution. You could think that through this he was not as evil as the young one, but with what happened in the end, you can say that he was obviously just a different kind of evil.
As I stated earlier, the depiction of this final scene and everybody from the protagonists suffering there was surely what made many people give this a high rating, but honestly I cannot do the same and ignore all the mediocrity before that. This long closing sequence was memorable somehow, but also I would not even say it was particularly good, let alone great. What is wrong with a man slapping the captured one from the resistance or wherever he was from? I mean it may sound harsh, but the slap would not kill him and apart from that the men are even told that the captured will die not much later, so it surprises me to see the others show such hesitation when it comes to slapping the other guy when it is about saving your own life. It is just a slap. I was really surprised that only one did it and also I found it pretty shocking that one character tries to hold another back when the latter is seemingly ready to go and slap the man. I mean the dying one in this scene may very well be innocent, but he is no saint or anything and we also do not know what he may have done or if he would slap our "heroes" if the situation was the other way around. By the way, I thought that the guy hanging there was the one who came to the pub and joined the other ones relatively early in the movie. Okay, what else can I say about this one? One aspect I liked and that keeps me from calling the film total failure was how the director managed to give us a claustrophobic depiction almost during the scenes in the pub, how they are locked in there in a way or not really locked in there, but they do their best to not attract any attention from everybody who is outside. Not with a lot success to be honest. Another interesting inclusion is the element of how, with the exception of the two who seem like main antagonists in the end, you can never be really sure who is good and who is maybe not so good from the main characters we meet already at the film's beginning. The shades are decent here and I can see why some maybe like this film, but for me it still did not do a lot. One example in terms of shades is also the guy who has the teenage girl at his home and all these other kids and you can never really be sure what is on his mind there. Why he does what he does and what his motivation there is. Dark or caring?
For me it is a somewhat close call between calling this a weak or calling it an okay movie, but taking everything into account, I would rather have to go with the former unfortunately. Another element I liked here was the music and with that I am not really talking about the score or soundtrack, but rather about the scenes of the film in which music was a slightly crucial part of the story, namely when one character wants to listen to it in the pub and then proceeds on to the billiard table immediately afterwards before giving it another try a little later. So I think there are individually good scenes and inclusions and here and there we also get some okay attention to detail, but in terms of a well-structured film as a whole, it was just not enough for me. The depiction of the group mentality between the men also did not really win me over. They could have done a lot more there with the characters, especially as they (or Fábri) I should say threw us immediately into the middle of the action with no introduction at all. This introduction then came in a delayed fashion an hour later when they showed us where the men went after leaving the pub. By the way, this film was based on a novel originally by Ferenc Sánta and he was not even 50 when this was made, so you can surely say that he got to witness how this film grew on people over the years. He was also the only person almost from everybody attached to this film who managed to reach the age of 80. I have not read the novel, so I cannot say if the problems I had with the theatrical outcome here are already to be found in the literary work or if they happened in the transition to the screen.
Overall, even if I did not like the outcome here too much and I think it is absurd to compare this film in any way to "Reservoir Dogs", let alone call it superior, I am still glad films like this are shown on the big screen here and there, especially in countries outside of Hungary. Classics returning to movie theaters has been such a positive trend in recent months, almost years and I genuinely hope that this tendency will go on and on for a long, long time. I keep reading that viewer numbers at movie theaters are still very low compared to where they were before the pandemic, but (almost) all the old films I watched on the big screen in recent months had rooms that were maybe not always packed to the last seat, but the viewer numbers were indeed pretty high. So yeah, "The Fifth Seal" gets a thumbs-down and negative recommendation from me in total and I think that there are many, many other movies dealing with the subject of military and prosecution during the days of World War II that should be seen before this underwhelming outcome we have here. Skip it.
There is almost no comedy at all to this movie. One minor inclusion where some people laughed a bit in the pretty full room (it surprised me how many came to see this one and it was not even the only screening) was when we have one character bring home a big piece of meat and he really wants to tell the woman there that it is not for her. That is all though. Other than that, it is a serious film and especially towards the end it is all about survival. I guess the depiction there was the reason why many people gave this film such a high rating. Maybe I would also give it a higher rating on rewatch, but what I saw yesterday makes it pretty clear for me that I have almost no intention to watch this film again anytime soon. Maybe ever. May sound harsh, but I just did not find it any good or convincing. It was not too credible what the riddle from early on did with the men and how it stayed in their heads for such a long time apparently. That it almost changed their lives. If in a good or bad way, everybody must decide for themselves. I almost found the scenes more interesting that had this young rising officer with light hair together with the more experienced general and the latter teaches the former a lesson about how to deal with political prisoners. That murdering them right away is not always the best solution. You could think that through this he was not as evil as the young one, but with what happened in the end, you can say that he was obviously just a different kind of evil.
As I stated earlier, the depiction of this final scene and everybody from the protagonists suffering there was surely what made many people give this a high rating, but honestly I cannot do the same and ignore all the mediocrity before that. This long closing sequence was memorable somehow, but also I would not even say it was particularly good, let alone great. What is wrong with a man slapping the captured one from the resistance or wherever he was from? I mean it may sound harsh, but the slap would not kill him and apart from that the men are even told that the captured will die not much later, so it surprises me to see the others show such hesitation when it comes to slapping the other guy when it is about saving your own life. It is just a slap. I was really surprised that only one did it and also I found it pretty shocking that one character tries to hold another back when the latter is seemingly ready to go and slap the man. I mean the dying one in this scene may very well be innocent, but he is no saint or anything and we also do not know what he may have done or if he would slap our "heroes" if the situation was the other way around. By the way, I thought that the guy hanging there was the one who came to the pub and joined the other ones relatively early in the movie. Okay, what else can I say about this one? One aspect I liked and that keeps me from calling the film total failure was how the director managed to give us a claustrophobic depiction almost during the scenes in the pub, how they are locked in there in a way or not really locked in there, but they do their best to not attract any attention from everybody who is outside. Not with a lot success to be honest. Another interesting inclusion is the element of how, with the exception of the two who seem like main antagonists in the end, you can never be really sure who is good and who is maybe not so good from the main characters we meet already at the film's beginning. The shades are decent here and I can see why some maybe like this film, but for me it still did not do a lot. One example in terms of shades is also the guy who has the teenage girl at his home and all these other kids and you can never really be sure what is on his mind there. Why he does what he does and what his motivation there is. Dark or caring?
For me it is a somewhat close call between calling this a weak or calling it an okay movie, but taking everything into account, I would rather have to go with the former unfortunately. Another element I liked here was the music and with that I am not really talking about the score or soundtrack, but rather about the scenes of the film in which music was a slightly crucial part of the story, namely when one character wants to listen to it in the pub and then proceeds on to the billiard table immediately afterwards before giving it another try a little later. So I think there are individually good scenes and inclusions and here and there we also get some okay attention to detail, but in terms of a well-structured film as a whole, it was just not enough for me. The depiction of the group mentality between the men also did not really win me over. They could have done a lot more there with the characters, especially as they (or Fábri) I should say threw us immediately into the middle of the action with no introduction at all. This introduction then came in a delayed fashion an hour later when they showed us where the men went after leaving the pub. By the way, this film was based on a novel originally by Ferenc Sánta and he was not even 50 when this was made, so you can surely say that he got to witness how this film grew on people over the years. He was also the only person almost from everybody attached to this film who managed to reach the age of 80. I have not read the novel, so I cannot say if the problems I had with the theatrical outcome here are already to be found in the literary work or if they happened in the transition to the screen.
Overall, even if I did not like the outcome here too much and I think it is absurd to compare this film in any way to "Reservoir Dogs", let alone call it superior, I am still glad films like this are shown on the big screen here and there, especially in countries outside of Hungary. Classics returning to movie theaters has been such a positive trend in recent months, almost years and I genuinely hope that this tendency will go on and on for a long, long time. I keep reading that viewer numbers at movie theaters are still very low compared to where they were before the pandemic, but (almost) all the old films I watched on the big screen in recent months had rooms that were maybe not always packed to the last seat, but the viewer numbers were indeed pretty high. So yeah, "The Fifth Seal" gets a thumbs-down and negative recommendation from me in total and I think that there are many, many other movies dealing with the subject of military and prosecution during the days of World War II that should be seen before this underwhelming outcome we have here. Skip it.