One would think that the cemetery is rather forlorn even on a nice, sunshiny morning...Well, this film proves the contrary. Gravediggers are all around (this is still easy to understand), as well as bored old gentlemen and members of the Mafia of different ranks and positions. And since they're here, they sometimes shoot each other (corpses really do not draw too much attention here, especially since they keep resurrecting), they attend to suicides, hold weddings, bands appear and disappear with their full gear between the gravestones and there are the small terrorist groups...To be short, life goes on in the garden of the deceased. There's indeed nothing wrong with that, since everybody is everybody's relative or at least buddy here, so they know each other in a rather intensive way (still from Felső Erdősor Street primary school), like a cemetery caste. There is no place here for outsiders who don't know the rules, the discriminating world of the living dead (or resurrected?) doesn't accept them. Pity, because the viewer himself is an outsider. He, however, does have some chance. For instance he can laugh a lot, as compared to our so-called comedies, really a lot. According to Jancsó's own words this film is really user-friendly to the utmost. Friendly even to the users expecting more than superficial entertainment. This movie is most obviously - and not the least surprisingly - again some kind of social parabola.

This couldn't be otherwise in the case of an author who has done this all his life. The ways of expression may be different, even the society depicted...but only conditionally. Jancsó's most famous films model historical situations through simple stories. "In Jancsó's films the faceless authority appears against the also faceless, inferior, but resistant heroes. It is an irrational, illogical world: constant threat is reigning, we have to read from signs." (Gergely Bikácsy) These films are social-historical parabolas, they strive to interpret the world's irrational circumstances that materialise in ever renewing forms. "...All events can be traced back to a few basic mathematical equations", Jancsó says and his films constantly illustrate this reduced view of history. Even when it is not his basic purpose.

Something similar happens in this film. The problem is that the social circumstances seem to have disappeared. In the 1960's authors undertaking social criticism elaborated some kind of encoded language in order to be able to communicate with the audience under the nose of the authorities. The symbolism rooting from this necessity had its advantages for artistic expression.

Today we don't need codes, symbols, everybody expresses whatever they want, anything they find worthy. Whatever this film says about society in the 1990's is really simple: everything is possible, anybody can do anything. No big deal, not really interesting either.

Symbols are no longer necessary, it is written on everybody's foreheads who they are and what power they have (or if you like it is tattooed on their necks like brands). Whoever can read signs will have no problem in orientation. Therefore codes will disappear from illustrations, they will limit themselves to presenting the above mentioned. The characteristic figures promenade before the camera (there is no need for a script, some clever sentences will do), the viewer easily attaches them into the relevant stereotypes. There is nothing definite to say, the author knows nothing more about the given society and its circumstances than the simple man of the street who meets the same faces. There are no secrets to find out and there are no decoders either; therefore there's no expression, no hidden communication.

What's really interesting in this film, however, - at least in my opinion - is that it communicates exactly this situation and not even necessarily to the audience, but to the other filmmakers (or the ones pretending to be filmmakers).

The living dead of the cemetery wander around among the remains of social circumstances gone by. They die more and more often, but this fact has no consequences to their further lives, they are trying variations to a theme, stuck on the verge of a lost life or rather a lost death. This is some sort of purgatory, where nothing is determined, anything can happen, but nothing is significant. That means that the players are given a rare opportunity of enacting life-variations. Even death-variations. In this beautiful, independent, democratic state, what can two blokes become, who went to the same primary school in Felső Erdősor Street? Gravediggers, maybe Mafia-leaders, or something totally different...This is not the important question, what's important is what becomes somebody who still has a flickering lantern in his hands? I think I can give two different answers based on the film. On the one hand, that society cannot (and will not) do anything with these lanterns. "The Lord has given you a lantern, write me a matrimonial advertisement!" - or some request like this is the maximum, this is the best society can do, this is what it demands from its artists. No wonder that the director soon retreats into a state of seeming death. Resurrection is often tried, but nobody can pass through the gate of the cemetery. And nobody ever visits there. Thus, the Hungarian filmmaker meets his own laments in the picture.

But as far as I can see, the film doesn't want to justify anybody, rather it accuses. The ones who truly have lanterns in their hands never waited for offers. He always created wherever he could, without support, out of inner forces.

Jancsó depicts himself as dead, but not due to outside reasons. He is shot and burnt; but no harm is done to him. He is still dead. Dead from the inside. We see him fall into water, float lifeless in water, sprinkled with water...baptismal water, water of the Lethe? It is stale, that's for sure. We see him get shot, burnt, jump into water...suicide, homicide, natural death? It is death, that's for sure. They used to write that Jancsó finds it his task to wrestle with the most important questions of his people; this time he admits that he cannot and will not wrestle with questions of Now. This society has no Jancsó-parabola, it cannot have one, either. There is one solution left, not to theorize about life but to laugh at it. He helps the viewer do this, not to see and understand things any more. He is right, there is nothing to see, we have Mafia, they replace directors, they shoot horses and brides, so what?

Filmmakers still have to take this picture personally, since Jancsó doesn't only tell off himself. This is strong criticism to all filmmakers, since as far as expression and meaning is concerned, they are the real dead. They have wings (or lanterns in their hands), still they can't fly (a pathetically bicycling angel is indeed a grotesque sight), and again not due to external reasons, but because something is missing from the inside. The two gravediggers at the beginning and end of the film do the usual cemetery routine. They remove wreaths from a grave, then we see them with urns in their hands at a funeral, then a funeral march appears, while at the end of the film they really dig a grave. That is, we see a funeral backwards, in reversed order. As if we wanted to dig up somebody, resurrect or simply uncover him. Something that used to be ours, that we hid like the dog hides a bone for future times and now it's not there. Not because we don't find it, but because we don't deserve it. Maybe I only see this in the film because this is what I wish to see. Still, the small details suggest the same. For instance, when the waiter regretfully shows us that Uncle Gyula bit a piece from the champagne glass, I instantly remember the glass biting Zoltán Zelk from Fireman's Street, 25. Like the house in that picture, here the makers' topic has disappeared. And they cannot find a new one. (What's more, even if they get shot, they will come back, since "these have the right connections everywhere".) Of course the problem is not that they cannot find one; it is if they don't even try. They act as if somebody else was holding their lanterns, or its holding depended on somebody else...

The case may not be so serious. Maybe what we see is not some intermediary existence, but life after death, a grotesque Heaven. There are angels and real Paradise-like poisoned apples for the brides. Life after death is just like the one before it. Hell and Heaven just as much. The task for everyone is to pull themselves by the hair if they feel that they should be pulled out of something, or if they like it that way, they should at least be able to laugh at it. After all "Making people laugh is distracting their attention from death. This is my purpose and desire." (Chaplin) This is a noble aim, a user-friendly and good solution (maybe the only one) for times when one's topic is lost. "You understand nothing of the world!" - says one gravedigger. "I know, but it feels so good!" - the other replies. He's right, it does.