4•2 o N mi 4, f ir ®

4

CONEY ISLAND

Dor L? Dor

Sunshine was cre-
ated and written
with playwright
Israel Horovitz by
Hungarian Jewish
director Istvan
Szabo, known for
melding historical
and personal
themes (Mephisto,
Colonel Recd) and
who drew in part
on his family history in making the
film.
The length of the film —
three hours — and cast are
of near-epic proportions. But
the film focuses relentlessly on
Ralph Fiennes, who portrays three
generations of men: Ignatz, the
judge; Adam, the fencer; and Ivan,

"Sunshine" tells the story of four
generations of Hungarian Jews.

S

unshine is a massive, sprawl-
ing film that spans 120
years in the lives and
loves of four gen-
erations of a Hungarian
Jewish family.
It is part history course, part
lust among the bourgeoisie and an
all-around lesson on the ultimate
futility of Central European Jewry's
attempt to shed its roots and assimi-
late.
The film starts around 1840,
when orphaned 12-year-old Emanuel
Sonnenschein — German for
"Sunshine" — sets out for Budapest
carrying as his only endowment the
secret recipe for an herbal tonic bear-
ing the family name.
Emanuel and his tonic lay the
foundation for the family fortune.
In the following 120 years covered
by the film, his male descendants
find success, convert to Catholicism
and suffer under the Nazis and
Communists.
The Sonnenschein men are
matched by even stronger women,
and there are many sexual liaisons
and betrayals.

To illustrate the point, Szabo points
to the town of Kecskemet, about 45
miles from Budapest.
"There the main square is sur-
rounded by seven different houses of
worship, which were all built toward
the end of the 19th century," Szabo
recounts. "There is a Baroque
Catholic church, a Christian
Orthodox church, a Protestant
church, an Evangelical middle school,
a synagogue and another Catholic
church. And in the middle of the
square is a coffee shop for everybody."
Szabo says he always envisioned the
same actor playing three generations
of Sonnenschein men, and he rejects
the suggestion that the triple casting
might confuse viewers.
"By using the same face for grand-
father, son and grandson, I wanted to

the Communist interrogator.
Fiennes, who first came to inter-
national attention as the sadistic SS
commandant Amon Goeth in
Schindler's. List, here pictures assimi-
lated Jews convincingly.
Nevertheless, having the same vis-
age (with only minor alterations in
facial hairstyles) appearing in three
roles confuses rather than unifies an
already densely plotted and populat-
ed film.
Rosemary Harris (played as a
young woman by her real-life daugh-
ter, recent Tony Award-winner
Jennifer Ehle) stands out among the
cast members as the matriarch who
binds together the generations. ❑

— Reviewed by Tom Tugend
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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8

we

..vaikOm\

The fencing auditorium in "Sunshine," where Ralph Fiennes, as Adam, trains as
an Olympic champion.

show that the challenges of history,
the Jewish struggle to be accepted by
society, repeated itself in every genera-
tion," Szabo notes.
"However, I needed an actor who
could create different characters, and I
think that Fiennes has succeeded
admirably."
Hungarians apparently agree. The
film is a great success in Hungary, espe-
cially among the country's roughly
100,000 Jews. In its first month, an
unprecedented more than 100,000 peo-
ple viewed this film in Budapest alone.
Many Hungarian Jews see the film
as a history of their own lives.
"We thank you for this film; now
we understand better our own role
throughout the history of Hungary
and within the delicate web of its soci-
ety" one local Jew told Szabo during a

lively discussion of the film in the
Budapest Jewish Community Club.
Szabo answered, with a metaphor, a
visiting Israeli's question about the
lack of Zionist ideology in the film.
"Every apple has a different taste,
depending on the geographical loca-
tion where it is grown. The taste of
the [Hungarian] apple is different
from the taste of an apple grown in
England or in Greece. I like the
Hungarian apple more than the oth-
ers," he said. "This is the realistic pic-
ture of Hungary's Jewry." ❑

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— JTA correspondent Agnes Bohm in
Budapest contributed to this report.

Sunshine opens today, exclusively
at the Maple Art Theatre.

W

sw
6/23

2000

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