KEEP QUIET
AJH Films/ Passion Pictures
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya
Grade: A-
Director: Sam Blair, Joseph Martin
Written by: Sam Blair, Joseph Martin
Cast: Csanád Szegedi, Anne Applebaum, András Dezso, Zoltán Ambrus, Rabbi Boruch Oberlander, Katalin Molnár, Eva ‘Bobby’ Neumann
Screened at: Tribeca, NYC, 3/24/16
Opens: April 14, 2016 at the Tribeca Film Festival in NY
I had a dream, a dream that Donald Trump found out that both of his parents are Muslims. They kept this a secret from him, but gossip was beginning to stir, enough that Mr. Trump did some research on his own. By this time, the country had found out his roots. Trump is thinking: “Maybe I should apologize and retract my view that special police attention should be given to Muslim neighborhoods in the U.S. Maybe not all Muslims should be waterboarded for information that I’m sure they have. Hey, maybe this apology will get me the Muslim vote (at least by the few who are not undocumented). But then again, I’d lose my other constituents. Hmmm.”
While The Donald considered his decision to apologize, I woke up. But this dream is not so far out. There’s this guy in Budapest Csanád Szegedi, not a Buddhist, but quite a pest. No, “pest” would be trivializing the activities of this rather large man, with a physique not unlike Trump’s. He’s well over six feet tall and possibly edging close to three hundred pounds, but we won’t hold that against him. Thing is, he was a Nazi sympathizer, not literally a skinhead, but a man who rose to be Vice President of the far-right Jobbik party in his Eastern Europe land which had already been raped by real Nazis and then by Communists, with a pendulum that might be swinging rightward even today.
We see from Sam Blair and Joseph Martin’s terrific documentary, one loaded with sharply-focused archival film, a number of talking heads, and a portrayal by the principal character that is probably going to convince most people in the theater audience that Szegedi is being rehabilitated. Cynics in the crowd will think he’s putting on an act, but he has no reason to do this. Now, this nationalistic Hungarian, the sort who would say “Hungary for the Hungarians,” translated would mean “No Jews.” because as his nefarious party believes, Jews are unpatriotic because they do not assimilate (as though there’s nothing right-wing Hungarians want more than to have Jewish pals). Never mind that Hungarian Jews fought and died for their country in wars and that they did nothing but add to the country’s scientists, doctors, lawyers and teachers. The directors show us actual films of crowds of proto-Fascists yelling “Death to the Jews.” Why? Who knows? Because they do not assimilate? Hardly. There’s no arguing with irrationality. It’s as though these wingnuts were sleeping through the Age of Reason.
Then our friend Csanád had an epiphany. A rumor was going around that this anti-Semite is actually Jewish himself. This was based on research. Szegedi discovered, upon questioning his maternal grandmother, that she was not only Jewish but a Holocaust survivor who hid the tattoo with long sleeves for decades, and that Szegedi’s mother hid her own Jewishness because, given the zeitgeist in Hungary, it was best to call yourself a Christian. The idea was to keep quiet.
Szegedi had options once he was thrown out of the party, known as the Hungarian Guard—the sequel to the hateful Arrow Cross which helped the Germans drive thousands of Hungarian Jews to the deaths during World War Two. He could leave the country for good, but he discovered on a trip to Montréal, Canada, that he was not welcome there and had to return to his own country the day after he arrived. He could have repudiated the rumors, telling his followers that they were all lies. He could have bent over backwards to show loyalty to the far right to such an extent that the skins and other idiots would decide that Szegedi cannot really be a Jew. Currently he is considering making Aliyah, to move permanently to Israel.
But for now he did something amazing, and because his actions were unusual, he became the subject of this moving documentary. He consulted a Jewish leader in Budapest, but not just of secular Jews, or a Conservative or Reform Member of the Tribe. He asked an Orthodox rabbi, Boruch Oberlander, to teach him more about Judaism. After about a year he was circumcised which he proudly called his Bar Mitzvah. The rabbi, who was heavily criticized in his community, insisted that Szegedi was entitled to be given a chance, and I fully agree, but some spokespersons with the Jewish community were disgusted that a great rabbi should even speak with a man bearing a history of anti-Semitism. Cinematographer Márton Vizkelety captures Szegedi in the Orthodox synagogue wrapped in a tallis, wearing a kippah, with with a tefillen wrapped around his arm and centered on his forehead.
The film is bookended with a train ride that Szegedi took from Budapest to Auschwitz together with Eva ‘Bobby’Neumann, who answered his questions, such as “Why do they talk about Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust”? (He asked the railroad personnel for “a ticket to Auschwitz.” Is there really a train ride from Budapest to Auschwitz, or do you have to take surface transportation from, say, Krakow?) In Auschwitz he visits the sleeping quarters, just some wooden planks, and finds out that whenever a guard felt like doing so, he would take some shots at the inmates. Together with the rabbi he visits a Jewish cemetery in Budapest. He is a changed man performing superbly in this doc as though a professional actor. His chemistry with Rabbi Oberlander is convincing, and the film, which is scheduled to show at the Tribeca Festival in New York on April 14 is exceptional and should be seen by a wide audience. And Iran’s former president Ahmadinejad should be invited. So should quite a few others.
Unrated. 95 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – A
Acting – A-
Technical – B+
Overall – A-
