I consider the discussion about art to be a meaningless waste of energy, so I will let others sort out whether this is 'great art' or not. Whether or not this is a cinematic triumph against plot and character though, as championed by many, will invariably depend on your definition of cinematic. It does not meet mine, at least my definition of richly cinematic worth leaving the mind behind.Here's the setup: it is apparently the 1890's, the place is a stretch of Hungarian plains rolling in the distance. A village of farmers has gone into a strike, with a battle being fought over their soul and minds. Now and then newcomers emerge from nowhere, young intellectuals who give spirited lectures on Engels and socialist theory, priests with their sermons and rites, soldiers of some distant , oppressive authority.The people are by turns confused and spirited, bold and despairing. They lash out against each other, burn a church. They pray and hold court. Now and then they sing and dance about their woes, stabbing who they see as more privileged. Soldiers swell their revolutionary ranks, then break out and shoot them. It all happens in circles in that same featureless plain.The allegory is stark, what the Czech had been for years leveling against Nazis: covert attack on the hypocrisy and tyranny of a distant state, by celebrating betrayed hopes and idealism.That's all fine, but for one factor. We see a lot of upheaval, a lot of pain turned into song. But we are not tethered into human soul for any of it. We never know any of these people except schematically, as actors on a stage. A disembodied camera liturgically roams and roams around these faces, but we have no entry into the soft underbelly of actual lives.It is a matter of presentation. In The Red and the White, Jancso solved this by first ushering us into a world at war, with stakes and limits, with blood coursing through people. So when he abstracted, we were moved the right distance away from the aimless bloodspill to view a more cosmic grind.Here the abstraction is all done before we get there. The abstract world is already in place and does not transform again; the sparse setting, the visitations, recitations and ceremonies. You don't make the jump to an ecstatic view, and it has to be you.So the effect is like being taken to a room where people are calmly sitting with eyes closed and told this solemn air that you see is meditation. How do you know they're not sleeping?

How does one go about describing this movie? Odd? Bela Tarr before Bela Tarr. Boring. Without a doubt. Definitely not for the mainstream cinema goer but is it also for the art house lover? Only a hard-core alternative cinema can love this movie. But can you appreciate it? sure. Roving cameras. Complex rhythms and sudden breakouts into song and dance, yet there is nothing musical about it. It is first and foremost a mood piece. To understand it, you really need to know the background of the opus. This might be considered a spoiler."According to film critic, Raymond Durgnat, the movie is based on a series of psalms, thus the title, and prayers written circa 1890. They are of a socialist nature echoing such biblical models as the Lord's Prayer."END OF SPOILERKnowing the background, the movie makes sense as a series of short stories, each ending with the same thematic resolution. A socialist parable for chaotic times. It was the seventies after all. Using a kind of folk narrative medium, kind of like performing in the village square for the elders, it possesses an African or European medieval story telling technique. Hard to follow, except as a tale of the lower classes versus the aristocracy and tyranny, it is something short of a dictum for revolution. Refusing to explain itself, it comes across as live theater packed with heavy symbolism. There is blood and lots of it. Gun shots and death. Camaderie, community, resistance, nakedness of the soul and death. Rambling in circles, at times, it is laughable; sprinkled with unusual sound edits, curious performances and image synching. But it is all controlled by the invincible hand of Jancso who orchestrates the mise-en-scene like a virtuoso marionettist. Tricky, intricate camera movements supposedly done in 28 shots make up the movie. It is a ballet of zoom lenses curious camera set-ups and resistance to the basic nature of its medium. Neither here or there on the engrossing meter scale, it does present experimental cinema and a different film vocabulary. Championed by some wayward critics over the years, it did win the best director at the Cannes film festival. So that is what you get. Limited story, confusing actions and narrative arc in a stop and go fashion but camera tricks comparable to the best of Fellini. PS. I saw the movie on the big screen but the projectionist framed it to look like a big TV screen. It looked odd. I have no idea if this was the original framing.

In the book “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” eminent film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote about RED PSALM being “…dazzling…awesome…ravishing…striking…it may well be the greatest Hungarian film of its time…”; conversely, Miklos Jancso'’s acknowledged masterpiece THE ROUND-UP (1965) – which I adore – is conspicuous by its absence in that singular pantheon. Besides, the late great film critic Raymond Durgnat wrote extensively about this film in his very last article published in 2002. Furthermore, Jancso' won the best direction prize at the Cannes Film Festival when Joseph Losey (whom I admire a great deal) was the President of the Jury and where RED PSALM was competing against such remarkable contenders as Robert Altman’s IMAGES, Harry Kumel’s MALPERTUIS, Peter Medak’s THE RULING CLASS and Andrei Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS! Why is it, then, that my star rating is such a lowly one? There is no doubt in my mind that this is a key work in the director’s canon (which makes my underwhelmed reaction all the more painful to me) but, frankly, this is truly a case where form completely overpowers content or, to put it in the apposite layman’s terms, a film which can only be admired but not enjoyed. The main reason for this is that the entire running time (a relatively modest 81 minutes in PAL mode) is taken up by Jancso'’s obsession with politics and folklore with no space left for any real characters to emerge much less a discernible plot line. This would hardly be a problem in itself where it not for the fact that when somebody takes a break from the constant – and by now familiar – communal dancing marathons (which, thankfully, does mean that some of the typically stunning girls get to shed their clothing), they do so only to spout a litany of Communist diatribes which completely wear the viewer (and the film itself) down before long. Although Jancso'’s exuberant visual style always had a certain aloofness to it, I really didn’t connect at all with any of the characters or events depicted here. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this is one time where the English subtitles (which, in themselves, are grammatically awkward and replete with spelling mistakes) distinctly felt like an intrusion and their verbosity detracted from the power of the meticulously composed images. Consequently, one’s enjoyment of the film as a whole suffers for it and given the generic, prosaic nature of the dialogue, I might well consider watching the film unsubtitled in the future! Amusingly enough, however, the Catholic prayer of Our Father is even blasphemously transformed into a Communist credo at one point.Still, this is not to say that the film is completely worthless: the rebelling peasant farmers sing various songs (a couple of which are in English) that, while lyrically are merely propagandistic, are also melodically haunting. Given Jancso'’s penchant for lengthy, traveling sequence-shots (the film is said to contain a mere 26 in all!) which are, essentially, its true raison d’etre, some striking images can’t help but stand out, in particular the burning of a church by the peasants and their eventual massacre by the landowners’ army of defenders. Even more remarkable is Jancso' fusing his historical recreation with unexpected but decidedly welcome fantasy elements which sees dead people coming back to life with a kiss and, in an unheralded uproar to which nobody retaliates, an incensed peasant woman shoots several soldiers in quick succession single-handedly, etc.As a result of my disappointing viewing of RED PSALM, I have decided to to take a sabbatical from Jancso' for now and postpone the three other films of his that I have in my possession to a later date (by which time, nevertheless, hopefully I would have acquired two more)…

The Red Psalm is an almost unapproachable film these days; the filmmaking practises of today have made us western viewers forget how to watch films that are not made to entertain.The Story is simple enough: the Red Psalm depicts the rise and fall of a peasant revolt in the earliest days of socialism. The focus is on the reasons why it doesn't succeed, rather than on characters and plot. In fact, to use words like "character" and "plot" in connection to the Red Psalm would be misguiding.This is an example of a film where message dictates the cinematic language of the film. It is not meant to be a realistic depiction of the living conditions of the peasants in the late 19th century. Instead it tries to depict realistically the reasons and causes of such tragedies in general. The film is full of what some people would call "gaffes", but they are there just because it does not matter if the actor has his wristwatch on or whether the guitar has nylon strings. That kind of authenticity is only superficial.All in all, The Red Psalm is an ultimately challenging viewing recommended for everyone who is looking for alternatives to Hollywood pap. It demands the attention of the viewer throughout, because it is not generic in any way. Yet it is not without its flaws. It is extremely slow paced, full of folk dancing and saturated with socialist propaganda. Yet features like Jancso's free flowing camera should interest at least wannabe filmmakers to this challenging and complex film.