We were approaching a record high as regards seats and the number of viewers on a weary Monday evening: in a hall capable of seating about thirty people, there were only ten spectators watching a contemporary Hungarian film! The film was shown by a projector - at least the film would not be torn -, the edge of the images was slanting, the projectionist - if we can call him by the name in this case - did not manage to set the side angle, so on the screen, the frames were spinning in trapezoid shape. Then we decided to see it again. The next day in another cinema, a larger one this time, there were only four (a real quartet!) of us. The four people, except for the writers of this essay, were all above fifty years of age, and most of them seemed to be retired housewives. How did they get to the cinema? How did they learn about the existence of this movie at all? It remains a mystery. Scattered posters in the city, some fruitless loud spots in art movies, exquisite and creative, but unsold Gondolap-cards, last year's Film Week projection, but since then no advertising at all. Perhaps it was the result of "whistling propaganda"? The news about the film travelled from mouth to mouth? And how does the Listing of Pesti Est attract viewers? Only this way, laconically: "Four-character chamber drama about the losers of the political changes, based on a play by György Spiró." No hyper spectacle, no wild romanticism or humour commando. Then what could have caught the interest of these fourteen people: Spiró? The four characters of the film? The chamber drama part? Or the political changes? (with new gangsters?) Or perhaps the losers? Yes, maybe. It would be superfluous to declare anything else about this film, but perhaps there is more to it. Let us analyse it according to the above-mentioned viewpoints.

Rarely do filmmakers produce films nowadays that intend to be an active part of public life and not just a lazy relaxation after a heavy Sunday lunch. And this is where the great virtue of the film lies: it responds to the present and attempts to deal with the past. Earlier the movie played a strong part in shaping public life and the general mood of people, it induced debates, actively influenced the intellectual aura, it had the power to form opinion and was dealt with widely. Today, however, few films wish to "talk back" to the system, and here we mean not (only) politics, but also human and social relations, as opposed to the films made before the 1990es placed in strong political context, criticising the system.

We could not at all find films produced in the 1990es (so, after the political changes) that deal with the former fifty years, that look back, that analyse the past, or evaluate the political changes from different aspects. We only encounter films that are set in that period. Well, in this case the classic Boileauean requirements prevail: one plot, one time level (a day in 1996) at one place (in the kitchen of a flat in a blockhouse): the intrigue of a past-tense story in the present. The hyper-realistic family circle of three is enlarged into four after the arrival of the Guest - deus ex machina.

The Quartet of Vecsernyés found the form, through which the political changes and the conditions can be talked about without appearing fake, distorted, pseudo-nostalgic (because there is, indeed, a big spoonful of nostalgia in the film, especially on the part of the Old Man) or too didactic. This is achieved mainly through the tension without a stake, by not being understood, through the compression and the wretchedness of human fates and conditions, and the intentional or accidental non-comprehension. We are after the political changes (the play was written in 1996; the film was shot by Vecsernyés in the summer of 2000), anonymous characters confined between four walls. The people try to breathe the air in an enclosed, airless space, in the smelliness of the blockhouse; some already gave in to the lack of oxygen. Inside the mixture of brownish-green, dried moss-like semi-darkness and the dirty whiteness of the uniform kitchen furniture; from the outside the bright light is burning: the sun always shines the same way.

"This is how we live, in the kitchen", says the sluggish wife both in the film and in the original theatre version (see the performance of the Budapest Chamber Theatre). The kitchen serves as the playing area and the agora of anti-heroes of the play. While the television room is the husband's life space, the kitchen is "owned" by the woman. The wife's territory. Depressing confinement. We cannot look anywhere, we cannot go further inside, we can only open the door from the kitchen, and we cannot step over the threshold (such a confinement was presented in the film Return as well).

On the free card promoting the film, we can see the architectural plan of the kitchen. A cooker, a counter, a fridge, and a table with three chairs. There is no fourth one. The table is pressed to the window. The guest sitting in the corner has no chance to leave, so he is arguing squeezed in. For the photographer it is a chamber drama. Locked together, due to lack of escape routes. In this space of pressed atmosphere, moving the four figures in an artistic way, showing them in various, long settings with premier plans, super close shots and narrow seconds is a rather difficult task.

Nevertheless, Balázs Márton photographs the telling, map-like faces with great enthusiasm. We can read a lot from them, and it is a true delicacy when during a monologue the picture is set on the listener(s) and abounds in their reactions and tiny movements. The camera is fixed on the figures' bodies and the telltale territory of the room for a disturbingly long time. The characters are set in the picture frame in a splendid way (for example, duos and trios are formed on a regular basis, among whom another player often leans in), but this prearrangement fits well into the series of uniform and excellent images. It is not easy to pick exact examples out of the film, because Quartet - in the positive sense - is a merging mass: it does not consist of real scenes, but a whole process.

Vecsernyés accomplishes his undertaking with minimal art, simple, so to say handy, but the more exciting and minute solutions. He deserves our appreciation: on the one hand, he succeeded in overcoming the confinement, and he was able to create an intense dramatic tension immediately born and kept throughout the film out of the depressing frames of the space: a real chamber drama.

In case of Hungarian films, it is usually the director himself who writes his own script, although very often, contemporary writers contribute to script writing and help making a film out of their writings (for example, Portugal). Hungarian dramas, however, are not always written for "stage performance"; there are a lot of so-called book dramas, as well as, some of which are worthy of filming. The question is how authentically these dramas can be made into a feature film, or whether they are easier to create a television play from (which is rather rare nowadays). Spiró decided to work with Vecsernyés and the director happily co-operated with the author, leaving out a few lines, although not too many.

In Quartet mainly the dramatist's messages and thoughts come through, Spiró's world and his vision of the environment. The playwright does not take a stand, only introduces a unique situation. He rather composes the text, proclaims the superiority of the text, the conflicts of the plot are only secondary. Although Spiró's little funnies prove to be confusing and superficial both in the film and the drama: the episode curves that seem to be interesting first and enrich the text body prove to be a cul-de-sac; here we feel that Spiró was desperate to include them, because he simply loved them, but from the mouth of the characters they sound somewhat alienated and fail to move anything further in the film either. They cannot integrate, they only serve as balances, such as the parts about sperms and the whales, as well as the Guest's information about his life wrapped in stories, etc.

Spiró (or Vecsernyés) does not feel the need to radically cut the text and is not willing to re-write it at all. They stick to the original dramatic dialogue with relative strictness, which is not fruitless: the recurring texts, self-repetitions, feed-backs, "retelling something in a bit different way" do not feel redundant, although it too frequently makes the bed for the message and can sometimes be regarded as generous hammering, which is only seldom tiring.

Sometimes, the text remains too literary, too lyrical (especially during the Guest's tirades), and yet it is compressed and condensed, just like the atmosphere. In the beginning the theatrical (since originally it was a drama!) dialogues cause some confusion, but then they become an integral part of the film, take on the characteristics of a film and expand the four walls. These theatrical sentences do not only create tension, but characterise as well. Besides being text-oriented, Vecsernyés places a great emphasis in the film on the typical activities, such as knitting, mechanical and ordinary kitchen duties and rummaging.

The dialogues are not film-like, but after a while we get used to them and it gives the uniqueness of the film: people talk to each other without hearing each other in the terrarium of the blockhouse, live their own life, do not let anyone get closer to them, fail to understand anybody. They just keep babbling the metaphors of their own life. Everybody is a separate little world without the others. The clusters of their life rarely intersect, only perhaps touch each other. Whatever they say, they do not understand one another in space (USA - Central Europe) or in time (see the generations' linguistic differences between the meaning of words expressing "take something without permission"); in a way they cannot find words. Syntax error. It is not a Family Firetrap, where everybody argues with everybody else. Here people learnt to live together, talk to but do not understand the other, talk through something, scrape along: just to pass the time somehow.

The conditions can best be described through the deteriorated language, the internal, spiritual poverty, despair, indifference and boredom. This is a distorted language that consists of all the opportunism of communism, as well as its avoidance of honesty. In the communist era the silly, primitive and complicated use of language was popular (see the party speeches, dialogues and pleadings), because people did not know what they could say, so they did not say anything and the distorted texts were born out of the linguistic stupidity and meaninglessness. Scriptwriters deconstruct the Hungarian language on the basis of the drama: besides, well-composed monologues, sentence fragments, rubbles of speech crumble from the performers' mouth. The merit of the dramatist: the situation can be kept and maintained through the intentionally emphasised talking-but-not-understanding. Everybody speaks their own mind. Who knows what they are really thinking of?

Nevertheless, the accent of the guest from America and the randomly used American English vocabulary is a fiasco. This is either the mistake of the director, the lack of Spiró's dramatic instructions or a common decision. Péter Blaskó, who portrays the Dollar Daddy both in the drama and the film, does not speak Hungarian with difficulty, but can fluently speak out his monologues. We do not understand the intention, what they wanted to demonstrate with it, how they imagined the speech of the Hungarian-American (American-Hungarian) returning home?

Speaking about the Guest, we cannot skate over the film's rather unlucky scenes of remembering. The melancholy is sweet and sour, like the Chinese sauce, with its illustrative washed and psychedelic images: the links are simply bad, the side-shoots are unnecessary. If they were put into the film in order to divide it into larger blocks, only a simple narrow diaphragm would have been sufficient; if they aimed to have a "beautiful flashback", they might as well have trusted Blaskó's dreaming eyes. If somebody talks about the old ground and expresses his memories with words, there is no need to deal with the age of innocence and the old times in lengthy, idyllic images in slow motion.

When the Guest leaves without his job done, the viewer does not need to be shown in a noisy street montage that he actually returned to one of the American metropolises. (If they really travelled there, well, congratulations.) There's no need to have doors, handles, windows, which somebody knocked at or opened to warn the others, or to take them away. (Gábor Berkes, the composer of many commercials and pop songs this time created an excellent soundtrack that lacks commonplaces to accompany the remembrance. Congratulations!)

In Quartet four characters tell a story: in the polyphony everybody reacts to everybody else (shouting, muttering hysterically and giving lectures), but the emphasis remains on the relationship between the Guest and the others. The family trio is an interesting creation in itself and the dispute with the Guest further saturates this environment.

The film introduces social and human patterns, as well as methods of behaviour and tolerance. Its aim is not to encourage us to choose, but to demonstrate. It gets to the depth of details from the general. Guest (you can expect good in return for a good deed, hunger for love); Old Man (obsession, faith to principles, pathetic uncompromising); Wife (simplicity, insignificance); Woman (desire to breakout, to acquire and to possess; the typical figure of calculating person hungry for money). These characters are almost allegorical, have not got a really exact silhouette, which is also strengthened by the impersonated names. Substitution and individualisation is the performer's duty: unfortunately, the director's reins are let go here, the characters run in different directions and the loss of concept is felt.

From among the performing quartet, two figures stand out: Piroska Molnár plays the elegantly elaborated, deeply portrayed and appropriate figure of the retired woman, while Péter Blaskó forms the emigrant appearing with a bunch of flowers, with devotion and humbleness. The walking American dream works with "Blaskó's splendid suggestions" and clear speech: he is sentenced to remember and looks for words supported by few gestures. The Guest is spiritually the most complete and graphic figure. Blaskó approaches it with wonderful tones. Only perhaps his smiles seem to be unnatural.

Andor Lukáts - who might be too young for this role - often tries to act out temper, strong emotional torrents with shouting, hoarse gaggling and loudness, unfortunately. It is joyous, however, that he, relying on his excellent qualities, his sophisticated and refined performing tools, pushes this loudness and acting into the background, when as an angry man he is hissing and whispering, and with his tense and pulsating body language he shows a chiselled and mature artistic performance. On the contrary Ágnes Bertalan in the role of the Woman with her unsuccessful and hectic private life walks on tight rope between unauthentic and mediocre acting: her figure is undeveloped, her breakdowns abound in illustrative elements, her great monologue resembles the ambitious solutions of amateur actresses full of panels. She is striving to find the character (cigarettes, flapping around, sudden changes of mood, etc.), but she is unable to make us believe in the ambitious Woman who wants to break out of the concrete block. She is rather an object that looks like an actress, vibrating on the screen and leaves a huge question mark behind.

Everybody has their own cross, some have the sweater, some have the Eurosport, others the PIN code, the family failures, the monotonous, indifferent life. Only the grandstands and auditoriums echo the cheering, but football is not Hungarian, the chicken is not warm, the interest is not Hungarian any more, it is not for the country, but for ourselves. Everybody is afraid of something and everybody misses something (value, love, interest, money). Ideas are devalued, faiths are lost or destroyed, ideals sublimed in the pit gas of the housing estate.

The Old Man cannot be dragged out of the television room, his own territory. He watches football, as if he were out on the field, but there are other players there. On Eurosport the Irish-Dutch match is roaring, the capitalists are kicking the ball. He is lost in the past, gets stuck there and only interested in that - no matter how the Guest is trying to pull him out of there. He is not affected by the new winds. Ha cannot wake up and cannot expel his nightmares (engineers as the destroyers of the country; industrialists): he is making up conspiracy theories, although not one moment of them is true. The confirmed old man should understand that communism is over (although that gave him faith), moreover, there are no communists either, since they are capitalists already, and he is not obliged to love Netto, just because it is Soviet. He needs to understand that he should not be afraid of retaliation, and it is superfluous to make up conspiracy theories, because nobody is interested in what happened a long time ago.

To go or to stay? The introvert wife does not take it as a matter of principle. The point is to have something to eat every day. Her huge body inhales all the life, paralyses every function of movement: she is a dumb housewife with primitive way of thinking, who keeps repeating stereotypes, gossip and untrue little funnies to others, and makes herself believe in them, too. Her life space is the kitchen, the area of life reduced to biological functions only. She always drags the Guest back to where he began. No matter how he argues, requests and begs to save them from wasting away, it is all the same for the woman: she is contented with knitting a sweater and heating up the poppy seed pasta. The question of poppy seed pasta cheers up the viewer: should she heat it up or not? The Guest's good intention becomes levelled with the pasta: here it is, you can have it, but who wants it? Useless offers all the time.

Only their daughter gets the message: the Guest offers money and she needs it - we can place the emphasis anywhere, we can change the word order. It is necessary for a decent, normal life. She is greedy, but we must not forget: she was born into a new world, where greed is a major interest to survive, where the beginning is hardest, impossible on your own; so people decide to sell their soul. The only purpose is to make ends meet and get personal possessions. The Woman feels humiliated, but she is rather wishing to have the credit card and not for her daughter's stay abroad, because she wishes she did not have to die of working too hard. Her dream is a great dropout, but she falls back on the linoleum floor. She would rather deny her parents, she feels ashamed of them. Daddy is a stupid, pathetic prat, who served others in the old system, instead of making a fortune. The flat in a blockhouse is the only thing he could give to his own family.

The Guest is only smiling and grieving under his nose. His life is empty: he can express himself with difficulty (or too easily), he is struggling: is he a stranger or not? The man from America (with his telephone and insurance), who worked throughout his life there, got divorced, his children grew up, they have their own family, and he is completely alone in the world. Money did not make him happy. Now he is begging to a real communist to let him "adopt" them ("You are my family!"). A disturbingly absurd situation. He arrived like Messiah with pious grin on his face to return an old good deed. Then he saw the conditions (for example, the tasteless wall tapestry) and his altruism turned to resignation, he lost heart. He came here, he saw everything and now he would like to return. Due to lack of interest, redemption has been cancelled. The Guest may think: mission impossible.

The film is discriminative with potential views to a certain extent: it can be understood only with some involvement, historical experience and personalisation. That also explains the average age of viewers at the cinema. Although today most people who lived then are still alive now, the movie provides an excellent picture to the younger generations about the aftermath of 1956, the different social conditions, the lifestyle, in one word, the effect mechanism of a change.

Quartet is based upon speech and relies upon images. Balázs Márton does not intend to photograph virtuously and juggle with visual tools. His aim is merely to underline and emphasise the message. While the text also characterises, the pictures undress the objects of description.

Quartet is a financially low budget, and artistically a valuable film, brilliant in complex presentation. The only problem perhaps is that it does not leave enough time to the spectator to identify with the plot. The atmosphere is highly tense and depressing all the time. The viewers cannot feel relieved, because they are dealing with the dramaturgy built upon the script. The episode images of the film might bring some time-off for the brain, but they are so bungled up that they only confuse the viewer even more. We can see great montage series at the beginning of the film: dripping tap, genre painting images of the decorative wall tapestry preserving the folklore of workers' colonies, but they slowly deviate from the kitchen and the reality, and become too direct.

Spiró himself called Quartet a comedy, but it is only a Checkovian wishful thinking to laugh at something that is said, but true, that is beautifully tragic. Perhaps we might look at it from this angle. What for a tragedy and a catharsis if we can finally laugh at what we ruined again!

Translated by Adrea Danyi