Review of Afterlife

Afterlife (2014)
9/10
One of the best Hungarian movies I've seen for a while
27 September 2014
I've read many times in the last few years, that a Hungarian movie is either artsy and indigestible for the average cinema crowd or brainless replicas of brainless Hollywood blockbusters (also replicas). I think this isn't true. I love art movies and I don't think it is a bad thing to digest a piece of art. If you have to think it over and over again, it stays with you. Many of my favorite movies took me a while to chew over and they become part of my life - I refer to them, I think about them, even years after first seeing the movie. A long story short: I'm a fan of art flicks and not against a good(!) mainstream one. Now, Afterlife gets the best of both worlds: you can take it as a weird comedy flick, but you can dig deeper and it leaves you a lot to chew on. Zomborácz Virág follows the "Give the emperor what belongs to the emperor, and give God what belongs to God." rule. She gives it both: art and entertainment. This is a kind of black comedy where you laugh, but it leaves a bitter taste. It reminds me Anders Thomas Jensen's Adam's Apples, but with an unmistakable Hungarian/eastern European taste. The actors are all great (I could list the whole cast), the casting was really good and the cinematography is excellent: you see great camera work and beautiful images. Everyday places made beautiful through artistic work, eg. in the beginning of the movie when Mózes (Kristóf Márton) sits in his "cell" or at the end on the boat. I won't go into details about the plot, because it's best is if you go watch this movie unprepared - don't read too much about it. In my opinion this is one of the movies of 2014, that's definitely worth seeing.
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