Red Psalm

Ode to revolution featuring lots of the director's trademark complicated staging, plus some bare-breasted frolicking, a bit of whip-cracking and lots of choreographed walking in circles. The latter could have been improved if Busby Berkeley had been brought in to add some professionalism. Surely left and right can come together and agree that injections of seventies hippiness are almost inevitably dispiriting. The kind of thing that will make one pine for the glory days of socialist realism.

Red Psalm is leftist cinema that merges modernist aesthetics with peasant folklore. Historical accuracy isn't Jancso's aim, but he nonetheless reconstructs a vision of the past that feels authentic in spite of its anachronistic elements.It also doubles as a 'socialist musical' with its wall-to-wall soundtrack of protest songs and simple folk tunes that stand in direct counterpoint to the complex camera movements that relentlessly track and circle the actors with extreme virtuosity.

Jancsó sure is a master of the long-take, making the direction of this it worth watching. But the whole plot was too abstract and symbolic for me to really care for it.

It's not that "Sparkling Winds" was easy to swallow, but this is even stranger. Jancso and Hernadi's favorite themes of socialism and military repression are here, and the signature pendulous tracking shots in an open field... but the aesthetic sometimes reminds me of Peter Brook's Marat/Sade - a lot of very declaratory, exclamatory dialogue, from unspecific characters, is juxtaposed with song numbers, and this is how the plot is conveyed. Many young peasant girls prance around half-naked.

Too esoteric for my sensibilities, but there's no denying the pure aesthetic quality.