Although it has been twelve years since I saw "Childmurders", the memory of its beauty and texture has stayed with me. The young boy and his grandmother are both vivid in my mind, both very well played. Many of the images of the sky, the canal, the bleak neighborhood have remained also. The awful meanness of children is a catalyst for the action and we can feel the inevitable tragedy. Lack of alternatives in life, especially for those tossed aside by society, often leads to terrible results, as in this story. But the lovely relationship depicted - the reversal of the caretaker and nurtured - is so sweet and real that it takes over the movie. I look forward to seeing this movie again soon.
3 Reviews
Great character study
Angeneer29 May 2001
This film is centered on characters. The plot progresses slowly (perhaps a bit too slow) and the effects are minimal. Black and white underlines the general mood. While all the cast is top-notch, Barnabas Toth throws a brilliant performance. A very talented kid!
The many faces of the night
hasosch19 April 2009
Warning: Spoilers
"Gyerekgyilkosságok" (Child Murders) by Ildikó Szbabó is a black-and-white movie that plays mostly in darkness: In the always dark bedroom of the grand-mother whose mind has darkened and still thinks that she is the primadonna on stage that she used to be decades ago. No ray of sun light enters through the shades of the windows that are additionally closed by thick curtains. When the boy opens the door, there is not even light coming from the hallway into the bedroom. "Bizsú" (Bijou) lies in her death-bed, her grandson sets upon her the wig, enlightens her long-filtered cigarette and pours her cognac - as it has to be due to a revered star. Even the flowers from her many admirers are set around her bed. On a table there are the stage directions that orient the star about the parts of the day and the wishes of the audience.
In such an ambiente Zsolt grows up. His mother had left him alone with his retarded and alcoholic grandmother and flew to the West. One can assume that grandmother and grandson live form the bit of money that the once great primadonna had saved. But one day, Zsolt meets an attractive Gypsy girl who lives alone in the dirt and filth of a forgotten railway-wagon. She is just having a stillbirth. 13 years old Zsolt helps her taking the little dead body out. They put him in the nicest-looking shoe-box they can find in the mounds of garbage where the Gypsies must live and bury him in the Danube. Unfortunately, there are seen by a girl who is in school with Zsolt. With faked voice, the girl calls the police and accuses the Gypspy girl anonymously of having killed her newborn baby. The police arrests the Gypsy girl, but she had already started to commit suicide. Fortunately for her, she dies on the transport to the hospital. Zsolt goes ahead and kills the little lying girl who has taken him away his last hope, by pushing her down from a dam into the Danube.
Not only are we in a black-and-white movie, not only is the whole movie set in natural or artificial night, but the structures of the light and the dark, the good and the evil, can hardly be separated. The children who kill in this movie have long been killed by taking them away their childhood. Sine they have never experienced love, they are incapable of measuring the value of any life. With the end of the movie I cannot agree, and it is quite unclear which intention the writer-director had in her mind.
In such an ambiente Zsolt grows up. His mother had left him alone with his retarded and alcoholic grandmother and flew to the West. One can assume that grandmother and grandson live form the bit of money that the once great primadonna had saved. But one day, Zsolt meets an attractive Gypsy girl who lives alone in the dirt and filth of a forgotten railway-wagon. She is just having a stillbirth. 13 years old Zsolt helps her taking the little dead body out. They put him in the nicest-looking shoe-box they can find in the mounds of garbage where the Gypsies must live and bury him in the Danube. Unfortunately, there are seen by a girl who is in school with Zsolt. With faked voice, the girl calls the police and accuses the Gypspy girl anonymously of having killed her newborn baby. The police arrests the Gypsy girl, but she had already started to commit suicide. Fortunately for her, she dies on the transport to the hospital. Zsolt goes ahead and kills the little lying girl who has taken him away his last hope, by pushing her down from a dam into the Danube.
Not only are we in a black-and-white movie, not only is the whole movie set in natural or artificial night, but the structures of the light and the dark, the good and the evil, can hardly be separated. The children who kill in this movie have long been killed by taking them away their childhood. Sine they have never experienced love, they are incapable of measuring the value of any life. With the end of the movie I cannot agree, and it is quite unclear which intention the writer-director had in her mind.
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