Elégia (1966) User Reviews

Meaninglessness, brutality on the screen.

[bobcic · 8/10 · 16 November 2001]

horsies. many horsies. surrealistic style, picture, music, atmosphere. colours are monochrome in the beginning. in the beginning it's embarrassing, unwatchable. 3 mins. 5 mins. horseys, doesn't make sense. old hungarian rednecks, houses, montage of sewage channels. they are going in the Liget with car and recording the trees on tape while illuminating them from downwards. windows. open windows. closed windows. horsies, rednecks. then a horsie. standing in the middle of a room. they put a little blanket in front of it's eyes. now they are hitting it with a utility in the middle of its forehead. lots of blood. lots. from now on all we see is slaughterhouse, blood, dead horsies, blood, blood, brutality, senselessness. i'd have liked to see the "during the creation of this motion picture no animals were harmed" logo. i guess this time it wouldn't have been true this time. was kind of hard to watch till the end.

One of the most stunningly beautiful films ever.

[lorenaisajon · 10/10 · 2 November 2004]

I had a 16mm print until it was stolen. I watched the film hundreds of times and it never stopped amazing me. The birds in the night light flying through the bare branches is just an awesome image.

As an elegy to the horse it beats Seabiscuit by three lengths. In carefully layered sequences, Zoltan Huszarik shows the evolution of man's relationship with the horse, from fellow worker, to provider of diversion, to a discarded relic of earlier times. The slaying of the former companion echoes Artaud for the truth that confronts the viewer about man's indifference to everything and the human economics of Hungarian life under the Soviets. It remains one the most stunningly beautiful films ever.