MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Memoirs of a River’ Probes the Poison of Prejudice

Movies that focus on great legal or social injustices--like the Frankenheimer-Trumbo adaptation of “The Fixer” or the many films on the Holocaust--start out with a heavy investment of moral authority. And sometimes they squander it; it’s easy to sympathize with the falsely accused, harder to convey all the human or cultural dimensions of their plight.

Judit Elek’s lucid yet passionate “Memoirs of a River” (Monica 4-Plex) is based on a historical injustice comparable to the Dreyfus affair: the 19th-Century Tizseaszlar trial, one of the most famous anti-Semitic incidents in Hungarian history. Yet it avoids most of the pitfalls, painting a strong portrait of a community poisoned by bigotry.

It’s shaped curiously, almost like a provincial epic veering into nightmare. When Elek shows her main characters--a crew of rural Jewish and Catholic loggers--drifting on their raft, swept through the muted beauties of the Hungarian countryside, and mysteriously encountering the floating corpse of a woman, it’s almost as if she’s tapping into that primal vein of the classic river-journey tale, from novels like “Huckleberry Finn” or “Heart of Darkness” to movies like “The Big Sky” or “L’Atalante.”

Then, when “Memoirs” shifts gears, and the loggers are thrown into jail by the furiously prejudiced Commissar Vay (Janos Acs) on a trumped-up charge of ritual murder, the style gets tighter, harder. The film bristles with moral outrage, and the courtroom confrontations between the innocents and their perjurous accusers become a grimly theatrical parade of charge and countercharge.

“Memoirs of a River” is a 2 1/2-hour film and a densely populated one, yet the central struggle pivots on two men, logger David Hersko (Sandor Gaspar) and the magistrate, Commissar Vay. Hersko, who confesses under torture, is portrayed so ambivalently--as an alienated, taciturn, bottled-up man--that we’re never quite sure which way he’ll turn.

Vay, on the other hand, is more transparent. Acs has caught an absolutely convincing sense of evil. There’s an almost lascivious side to Vay’s torture sessions. His face strangely vulnerable, yet wolfishly fixated on his victims, he’s like a crazed artist spinning out a story--a lurid horror tale of beautiful Christian girls slaughtered by Jews for their blood--which so excites him that he invents evidence and whips, thumb-screws and half-drowns his prisoners into confessing. Vay molds his victims into the bloodthirsty beings of his imagination.

In a strong, highly picturesque cast--which includes Gaspar (the 1990 Hungarian Festival best actor winner for this film), Pal Hetenyi as Csepkanics, the staunch Catholic logger, Franciszek Pieczka as another defendant and Hungarian Parliament member Tanas Fodor as their quietly effective advocate--Acs may be the standout.

Elek paces “Memoirs” very languorously, a tactic that seems forced early on, but, by the end, lets her achieve moments of real moral rage and pity. Elek doesn’t shove points at us. She avoids both the didactic manner of an Andre Cayatte or a Stanley Kramer, and the explosive, grandly muckraking style of a Costa-Gavras or an Oliver Stone. Instead, she marshals the facts with gentle authority, lets them slowly accumulate.

“Memoirs of a River” (Times-rated Mature for scenes of torture) is no less effective for its relative gentleness. What the movie captures best is the psychopathology of prejudice: that curious half-sexual bond that can exist between oppressor and victims, and the sheer moral grandeur of the victim who cries out his/her truth in the face of a prison of lies.

‘Memoirs of a River’

Sandor Gaspar: David Hersko

Pal Hetenyi: Csepkanics

Janos Acs: Commissar Vay

Franciszek Pieczka: Amsel Vogel

A Studio Budapest-Kerszi, MOKEP, Kerszi-Felling production, in association with the Minister of Culture and Communications/Paris, released by Quartet Films. Director/Screenplay Judit Elek. Producers Gabor Hanak, Hubert Niogret. Cinematographer Gabor Halasz. Editor Katalin Kabdebo. Music Peter Eotvos. Theme Gyorgy Kurtag. Costumes Erzsebet Miaklovszky. Art Director Tamas Banovich. Production design Andras Ozorai. Running time: 2 hour, 27 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (scenes of torture.)