Aurora Borealis aka Eszaki feny, written with two others and directed by Marta Meszaros - 8.7 out of 10

Aurora Borealis aka Eszaki feny, written with two others and directed by Marta Meszaros
8.7 out of 10


This is Sophie's Choice in a Hungarian perspective.

Joking aside, for there is very little to amuse one in this emotional drama, Aurora Borealis is a very good motion picture and we can forgive it for a touch of soap opera that comes at the end...indeed, even there, it is not corny, it is what often happened in this part of the world and the feeling that we have seen this before, often in melodramas, is deceptive, an incredible twist is actually fitting in here.

I live in the country next to Hungary, where the Russians have brought the dame disasters that plague the people in this motion picture and therefore I can see where they're coming from...so to say.

Olga is a Vienna based, rich lawyer and the mostly American jokes with counsellors don't have the same ring here, not by a long shot.
Asking people what do you call a few hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean and then telling them this is a good start would not cause the same smiles or laughter.

Olga drives a very expensive BMW SUV and has a successful life, but she is about to hear a tragic story from her mother, who is very old now, has just had serious health problems,  albeit she exaggerates them when she doesn't want to answer some questions regarding the distant past.
However, once she starts, she would not stop even before stating The Inconvenient Truth.

In the years following World War II, the dear Soviets took care of Hungary and all else behind the infamous Iron Curtain.
The mother, Maria, was in love with the young man, who is her first lover.

When they are stopped by a patrol, the poor young man is taken at the station, beaten and tortured.
His only chance is to defect and escape the communists, by illegally crossing the border - the small Trumps of the time did not have walls at these borders...there would be one later...The Berlin Wall, just before the Trump Wall, the latter evidently more beautiful, bigger, as the work of the greatest president in history...or is it the worst clown?

The guards at the border shoot and kill the young man and then one of the most excruciating scenes in movies takes place.

Next to the body of her dead lover, the Russians take turns in raping their victim!
They take her into custody as a prisoner, but she has the chance to escape, helped by an Austrian professor.

She would later be supported by her best friend, Edith.
The two women are both pregnant and Edith loves the father of her baby, a Russian Doctor that causes Maria a lot of psychological pain when they first meet, as any Russian actually...they all remind her of the monsters from the border...who were multiplied by millions throughout the lands they had invaded, resulting in one individual that now sits in the Kremlin.

Not sure who the father of her baby is, whether it was her late love or one of the Soviet rapists, Maria feels she has the enemy within her.
Just as in the famous, classic Sophie's Choice, Maria will be forced to choose between two infants.

Let's leave it at that, for there is a chance in about one billion that you read this and then look for it on HBO Go and we don't want to spoil the second part of the film for you.