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Sunshine, Istvan Szabo’s Historical Saga About Remembrance
The Hungarian filmmaker István Szabó retraces the tragic story of a Jewish family caught in the 20th century turmoil with Sunshine, an intimate portrait screened in a restored version at Cannes Classics. The film is most notable for Ralph Fiennes’s performance and his uncanny ability to inhabit three consecutive parts.
With a 1961 degree from the Budapest Film Academy, István Szabó blossomed into an extraordinary storyteller as of 1965 with Álmodozások kora (Age of Illusions), before reaching international acclaim with Mephisto, which won an Oscar for Best International Feature in 1981. Loyal to the Festival de Cannes, where not only Mephisto, but also Oberst Redl (Colonel Redl) (1985) and Hanussen (1988) were presented in Competition, the Hungarian director applied a humanist gaze upon the wounds of European History.
In 1999, he continued building upon this recurrent theme in his work and presents Sunshine, a richly-layered film entirely shot in English. The feature film chronicles the saga of the Sonnenscheins, a Jewish-Hungarian family confronted with the changes that are taking place in Central Europe over about a century. The story follows their social rise, their disappointments and their struggles to survive the devastating effects of anti-Semitism and totalitarianism.
On screen, the British actor Ralph Fiennes portrays Ignatz, Adam, and Ivan Sonnenschein, three generations of Sonnenscheins burdened by their heritage. Through the fate of these three characters, István Szabó explores the search for identity. However, Sunshine is also a sweeping meditation on memory, loyalty, and the price of giving up.
As the story goes, it is said that to be credible in the role of Adam, one of the descendants and a fencing champion, Ralph Fiennes trained intensively to master the moves of the sport and properly embody the elegance of that era’s competition. At his side, Rachel Weisz, Rosemary Harris, and Jennifer Ehle complete the film’s star-studded cast.
