DELTA

Hungary, 2008, 90 minutes, Colour.
Orsi Toth, Felix Lajko.
Directed by Kornel Mundruczo.

A film that cineastes admire for the beauty of its photography, the unrelenting treatment of its grim theme and its uncompromising ending. However, this Hungarian film, photographed in the Romanian Danube delta, takes us into a harsh world with hard characters who can be brutish. A man returns home to find his father remarried and a sister he did not know of. He builds a house and his sister comes to join him (being roughly raped by her stepfather on the way). While the couple find some happiness, the workers on the delta disapprove. This comes to a nihilistic climax on the night of a celebration of the new house. This is an Eastern European sensibility which is difficult to identify with.

1.The awards for the film? The impact on audiences?

2.Filming at the delta of the Danube, Romania, the people living there, isolation? Their work? Their attitudes?

3.The beauty of the scenery, the river, the delta, the landscapes, the waterscapes, the beauty of Nature? Humans interacting?

4.The basic plot: the man returning, his alienation from his father, meeting his stepmother, meeting the sister he did not know existed? His wanting to stay, to work? The sister coming to stay with him? His building the house? The relationship between the two? Inviting the people to the party, the celebration, the reactions against them?

5.The portrait of the man, silent, his background, his relationships, his work?

6.The girl, her place in the house, leaving, the warnings of her mother? Her stepfather and his reaction, the violent rape scene? Her going to the house, the relationship with her brother?

7.The parents, life on the delta? Hardships, morals?

8. The people, the help in the building of the house? The party, the drunkenness, their disapproval? Their taunting the girl, the attack, pushing her in the water? The attack on the man, his death?

9.The grimness of the subject and the treatment? Insight into human nature? Eastern European sensibility? Different from other sensibilities?