The fact that Lazslo Nemes is a masterful visual stylist is never in doubt.
His _Sunset_ opens with the close-up of a woman (Juli Jakab, playing
Irisz Leiter) literally unveiling herself, emerging from the shadow of an enormous, elaborate hat, the slow movement of Schubert's "Death and the
Maiden" quartet swelling in the background. The sound design is brilliant, with whispers filtering through the edge of the screen. When the film ends
the camera has steadfastly followed Jakab through a two-and-a-half hour.
It is a horror show; she has been assaulted, almost raped, has witnessed slaughter, the aftermath of mutilation, and worst of all, endured the
nameless terror of existing in an overripe, decaying, suffocating bourgeois society where everyone lies, judges you, stabs you in the back, and hides ghastly secrets. Many more segments of the Schubert quartet will have been played, one time by an ensemble which soon get slaughtered on screen. When
the end approaches -- a _Path of Glory_ style tracking shot through WWI trenches -- war comes almost as a relief.

Yet heavily symbolic fables work best with straight-forward, linear storylines, and _Sunset_ runs around in circles. In fact, it is a mess. Irisz Leiter returns
to Budapest from an orphanage, years after her hat-maker parents' death. Like in a dark fairy tale, she finds out she has an elder sibling who is an anarchist
and murderer. She searches for him relentlessly, like moth to flame, whenever she is not circling the new owner of the hat shop like a moth to a flame as well. This holy fool just wouldn't quit, even when repeatedly shown the door, treated with rude silence, physically attacked. Still she circles back to the same locations again and again, getting the same non-answer and witnessing
the same violence, like she has no capacity for learning or self-preservation. In a way she is the 1910 version of Lars Rudolph's Janos in _Werckmeister Harmonies_. But where Bela Tarr's masterpiece is organic, Nemes' film seems merely programed, repetitive. Compare the chaotic assault scene in Tarr's film,_ its only (if intentionally long) scene of explicit violence, with Janos appearing at the very end as spectator; with the repeated violent attacks in the Duchess's house, always with the camera mounted near Irisz's shoulder.
Soon you ask yourself -- haven't we seen this before, already? The film at least punctures the myth propagated in _The Grand Budapest Hotel_ that the nice middle class in old Europe wanted peace and the crude war-like proletariet ruined everything. The royals are positively monsters in this film, although the lowly citizens are not noticeably better.

Afterwards I rewatched Kornel Mundruczo's _Delta_, which also features the Schubert quartet No. 14, the Danube, and a story about a brother and a sister. I have forgotten most things about, but was vindicated in my impression that Mundruczo is a much better director. His fable-like film features resolute straight lines (in his dolly shots, in the straight-arrow plank-way that
leads from the river bank to the brother's self-made mansion on an island).
The violent scenes (a rape and a murder) are shot at respectful distances,
not as close-ups. Even the acting is more memorable, humane; Orsi Toth is
more worthy of praise than Juli Jakab (although Evelin Dobos does give a very nuanced turn as the head girl character in Nemes' film).

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