Synopsis
In 1913, an orphaned young woman arrives in Budapest to take up employment as a milliner at the hat store that belonged to her late parents but becomes mired in a search for a brother she had never known of.
2018 ‘Napszállta’ Directed by László Nemes
In 1913, an orphaned young woman arrives in Budapest to take up employment as a milliner at the hat store that belonged to her late parents but becomes mired in a search for a brother she had never known of.
Juli Jakab Vlad Ivanov Evelin Dobos Susanne Wuest Judit Pecháček Levente Molnár Christian Harting Julia Jakubowska Urs Rechn Björn Freiberg Sándor Zsótér Mihály Kormos Marcin Czarnik Zsolt Nagy Áron Öze Uwe Lauer Tom Pilath Mónika Balsai Miklós Székely B. Dorottya Moldován Kati Lázár Eszter Csépai Lilla Asztalos Éva Kelényi Horváth Ákos
Solnedgang i Budapest, Napszállta, Закат, Gün Batımı, 선셋, Tramonto, Súmrak, Захід, Atardecer, Залез, Сутон, Entardecer, Δύση Ηλίου, Sunset : la fin du jour, Schyłek dnia, Anoitecer, 日暮, Soumrak, שקיעה, Budapestin auringonlasku, Capvespre
AFI 2018: film #9
“it’s starting all over again”
my heart is still pounding. a riveting mystery where everyone we encounter is a suspect. the lead digs for the truth and we fall further into confusion and madness, the world flying past as it burns around her. there’s a lot here that i’ll have to think about, but i absolutely loved this
71/100
No less immersive, relentless and disturbing than Son of Saul, and the comparatively innocuous context arguably better suits Nemes’ now-signature style: Rather than being horrified by known atrocities kept just out of frame and/or focus, you’re creeped out by unknown ruptures signified primarily via the mise-en-scène itself. (See: Lynch, David.) Sustains a dazzling degree of waking-nightmare tension for roughly 90 minutes, anchored by Juli Jakab’s quiet ferocity; I was certain I’d found my film of the year, especially following a sudden Mother!-level freakout and subsequent denouement. And then it kept going for almost another hour, and kinda semi-lost me along the way (despite continuing formal bravura). Also, the final shot clarifies Nemes’ intention in a way that didn’t much appeal to me, perhaps because I never got terribly invested in a sociopolitical reading. It’s the free-floating genteel anxiety that had me gnawing my nails. In any case, unmissable.
I have always had many questions for the wind,
and staring from a place behind my eyes, the scent
of living fearlessly builds a castle in the clouds.
Three words, full words, they ache me: I miss you.
Simpler than silence: I miss you. And no longer can
I hear you breathe into my ears, and no longer can I
feel the lightness of your presence. You, ghost... you,
sprawled across the sheets, casting sand into the
ground, conjuring a wealth of emptiness. Can you
purse your lips before a mirror, or sip caramel from
a broken shot glass? Can you taste the heavy pulse of
the Earth, or make amends with a face from the past?
Ghost of my…
DiZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzaster. Nice hats, tho.
There is this popular Christmas game - trick. You wrap a gift with the prettiest paper, add some ribbons. Your gift sure is notable. Person who is gonna get it sure expects something special is hiding in the box. He opens it and...surprise surprise, box is empty! Ha ha ha what a joke. Obviously, I'm not a fan of such games. Especially when I'm seeing such games in movies. Especially when acclaimed directors playing such games.
Laszlo Nemes gave us haunting, brutal and unforgettable Holocaust expierence with his debut Son of a Saul. Director quickly became acclaimed and well known. Now he is back with his second feature film, Sunset. While I find it funny trashing…
TIFF film #8
We don't know how it ends for us. Our story will be told years from now by a generation we will never know. They will determine what we did and why. And the stories will change, depending on who and why they tell it. We don't know how it ends. We don't even know where it begins.
László Nemes' camera follows Irisz Leiter as she arrives in Budapest to apply for a job at her family's former hat shop. She discovers things about the family she never knew and the import of her family name. In her quest to get details she navigates the world in which she lives, with its revolutionaries and criminals and hierarchies and…
53
Wouldn't necessarily say László Nemes is dealing with a Sophomore slump, but after creating one of the great holocaust films in the form of Son of Saul, anything after isn't destined to match such intensity and anguish. Sunset, by comparison, is mysterious and gradual in a way that Son of Saul's continuous, sensory overload simply isn't, and it's an engrossing direction to take. Unfortunately, so much of its humanity is stemming from the Budapest setting and the central conflict rather than the character of 'The Princess', played at a remove by Susanne West. Its form is equally jumbled, pondering the lost articles and directions of historical narratives before placing emphasis on the suspense of the film's mystique. Rather than diving into the ambiguity, Sunset shuffles through perspective before (eventually: this is a sloooooow-burn) succumbing to an obscure coda. It never really gets involved in its own argument. But good golly, it's gorgeous. Just look at it.
"The horrors of the world hide behind these infinitely pretty things."
kinda lost for words but that quote sums up the film perfectly! don't be fooled by the pretty hats and the pretty gowns folks this is a horror film my heart was RACING
Wow, just...wow! I’m speechless.
Much like his successful Holocaust drama, Son of Saul, Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes has returned with another challenging historical nightmare, only this time, substituting exposition and narrative spoon-feeding to conduct something far more bewildering.
Simply put, it's an observation of a disgruntled society through the eyes of a woman in search for answers, but it's the way Nemes has chosen to orchestrate his story that adds to its complexity and pulls you in. By using a tightly framed camera on his protagonist, the experience is at times overwhelmingly claustrophobic and at others, like watching a roadside artist in Budapest paint an improvised watercolour picture of the city and its inhabitants imploding.
Don’t let the early 20th…
71/100
A.V. Club review. Had hoped that a second viewing might resolve some of my frustration with the film's last hour, but it still seems to peak about 90 minutes in and then reset. All the same, easily the best-directed movie I saw last year, achieving dazzling immersion while avoiding this era's looka-me ostentation.
A hat is never just a hat. Once upon a time, a hat could tell you everything you need to know about someone. Their social status, class, wealth, age, gender; all could be revealed by looking at the hat they wore. Of course, times have changed, and in this more chaotic world, we can no longer rely on hats to give us context.
Sunset focuses on the exact moment in time when that old world died out, and when the new order arose. László Nemes’ first film since his stunning Oscar-winner Son of Saul, Sunset tells the story of Írisz Leiter (played by Juli Jakab), the daughter of famous hat makers in Budapest. It’s 1913, and she’s returned to the…
TIFF 2018 film #8
I have to say that director László Nemes, whose previous film Son of Saul I adored, flummoxed me on this one. I wasn’t the only one in our group of a half dozen LB TIFFers either. In fact, of the group of us, I was the only one who managed not to nod off ( although it was a struggle ).
I loved his debut feature, Son of Saul, and the texture and style is similar here. Where I think things went off the rails for me was my focus on the top level story; a young woman returning to her dead parents hat store to work there as a milliner. She is rejected, but without…