NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Thorkell A Ottarsson Here is something you have never seen before. A war musical with dancing naked women, armed men, choreographed walking, communist folk songs and poetic settings.The film is based on peasant uprisings in Hungary that occurred between 1980 and 1910. The style is like something from a poetic theater. People hardly talk and everything is very staged. You might even say fake. Well, I suspect the message of the film is in the style. It is fake because communism and its origin was fake. It was an Utopia based on a lie. Miklós Jancsó was a socialist but not a communist (most people confuse the two) and he was critical of the direction his country was taking (as can be seen in other films by him). Here he gets the communist government to finance a film that looks like a glorious praise of the origin of the party while the style is telling us that this is all a staged lie. Don't believe it, any more than you believe that all these scenes are a realistic account of what happened.The music is brilliant. Folk songs, many probably used in the peasant uprisings. I also liked the staging and the poetic imagery, like how a stigmata wound in the hand turned into a red flower, which looks like a French Revolution rosette cockade pin. And how many will die only because of one shot fired. And the use of doves, as symbols of peace and harmony, was beautiful. And the naked women? I guess they represent the innocence and the beauty of the peasant, who in their ignorance believed in the promised land.You might not enjoy this film if you watch it as a straight communist propaganda. Watch it as a clever Trojan horse, pretending to be one thing while smuggling critical social commentary and you might get much more out of it. I for one liked this film for its bravery, its message, poetic beauty and for being like no other musical out there.

raskimono How does one go about describing this movie? Odd? Bela Tarr before Bela Tarr. Boring. Without a doubt. Definitely not for the mainstream cinema goer but is it also for the art house lover? Only a hard-core alternative cinema can love this movie. But can you appreciate it? sure. Roving cameras. Complex rhythms and sudden breakouts into song and dance, yet there is nothing musical about it. It is first and foremost a mood piece. To understand it, you really need to know the background of the opus. This might be considered a spoiler."According to film critic, Raymond Durgnat, the movie is based on a series of psalms, thus the title, and prayers written circa 1890. They are of a socialist nature echoing such biblical models as the Lord's Prayer."END OF SPOILERKnowing the background, the movie makes sense as a series of short stories, each ending with the same thematic resolution. A socialist parable for chaotic times. It was the seventies after all. Using a kind of folk narrative medium, kind of like performing in the village square for the elders, it possesses an African or European medieval story telling technique. Hard to follow, except as a tale of the lower classes versus the aristocracy and tyranny, it is something short of a dictum for revolution. Refusing to explain itself, it comes across as live theater packed with heavy symbolism. There is blood and lots of it. Gun shots and death. Camaderie, community, resistance, nakedness of the soul and death. Rambling in circles, at times, it is laughable; sprinkled with unusual sound edits, curious performances and image synching. But it is all controlled by the invincible hand of Jancso who orchestrates the mise-en-scene like a virtuoso marionettist. Tricky, intricate camera movements supposedly done in 28 shots make up the movie. It is a ballet of zoom lenses curious camera set-ups and resistance to the basic nature of its medium. Neither here or there on the engrossing meter scale, it does present experimental cinema and a different film vocabulary. Championed by some wayward critics over the years, it did win the best director at the Cannes film festival. So that is what you get. Limited story, confusing actions and narrative arc in a stop and go fashion but camera tricks comparable to the best of Fellini. PS. I saw the movie on the big screen but the projectionist framed it to look like a big TV screen. It looked odd. I have no idea if this was the original framing.

Lucia Joyce I saw this three times on the same evening as a teenager at UC Santa Cruz, which claimed at the time (this was before DVDs) to have the only existing print in the United States; this is almost 20 years ago now, but I still remember being -- if not exactly entranced, at least lulled, by Jancsó's restless, dancing camera, and the underground pulse of menace that pushed and shaped the actors' dancing. It takes place on a great plain or meadow, I think; and there's a cast of what seems to be a hundred dancers, dancing in the circle-dances not unlike the end of Bertolucci's "Last Tango In Paris," Communism and film form all one. The shots are long and languid, like Bela Tarr: there's something like 17 edits in the entire 90 minute film. And the last image is still seared on my mind's eye: a beautiful woman slits her palm with a knife, holds it to her breast, and then faces the camera, showing us her wound: instead of blood, a red scarf is tied around her hand, a banner that combined with her defiant pose speaks revolution, the red psalm of the title.

Sorsimus The Red Psalm is an almost unapproachable film these days; the filmmaking practises of today have made us western viewers forget how to watch films that are not made to entertain.The Story is simple enough: the Red Psalm depicts the rise and fall of a peasant revolt in the earliest days of socialism. The focus is on the reasons why it doesn't succeed, rather than on characters and plot. In fact, to use words like "character" and "plot" in connection to the Red Psalm would be misguiding.This is an example of a film where message dictates the cinematic language of the film. It is not meant to be a realistic depiction of the living conditions of the peasants in the late 19th century. Instead it tries to depict realistically the reasons and causes of such tragedies in general. The film is full of what some people would call "gaffes", but they are there just because it does not matter if the actor has his wristwatch on or whether the guitar has nylon strings. That kind of authenticity is only superficial.All in all, The Red Psalm is an ultimately challenging viewing recommended for everyone who is looking for alternatives to Hollywood pap. It demands the attention of the viewer throughout, because it is not generic in any way. Yet it is not without its flaws. It is extremely slow paced, full of folk dancing and saturated with socialist propaganda. Yet features like Jancso's free flowing camera should interest at least wannabe filmmakers to this challenging and complex film.