Downtown Abbey

I suppose I may have once had harsher words for a film about servants desperate to humour British royalty, inasmuch as they don't seem to have much leisure time, and there's no mention of rights or unions.

In fact they don't seem to have any time off at all, and serve altruistically day and night, the demanding nature of their age old situation less amenable to ye olde 9 to 5, any questions of an alternative lifestyle, absent from the master narrative.

I'm unfamiliar with the series so I don't know if they receive adequate wages, and if you're ever thinking about forming a union it's always best to consider whether or not it will bankrupt your employers, but if the idle rich can't afford to pay a decent salary, who can?, and Downtown's nobles don't seem to be working that hard.

Of course they have their own dainty way of labouring, comparatively, which has more to do with socializing and planning events than sweeping or dishwashing, and since a significant proportion of the population expects them to play these roles, handed down through the centuries, who I am to criticize them for doing so?

It's the democratic element you see which ironically uplifts the monarchy insofar as such traditions have just as much right to persevere as any other.

Their workers can still quit at any time should they find something lacking, or a better situation, although in many cases I imagine they strictly soldier on.

Due to the prestige they associate with their position, a bizarro rank and file reflection of aristocratic privilege, a phenomenon where one's proud to be of service to a duke or earl even if their quality of life's somewhat bland, for they imagine that others envy them, oddly enough, but then again, others actually do.

Covetously so.

I imagine serving the nobility must seem idyllic if you're serving the nouveau riche, if that's how you want to live your life (gaining status by association with a snotty clique), although I may be incorrect indeed, depending on how hip newfound wealth finds flex-time.

All I'm trying to say is that when you don't have many options you may settle for something snotty, who am I to judge?, and may even find it quite rewarding, depending on the character of your team.

The film does present a solid team equipped with full-time work by employers who don't hold them in contempt and do honestly listen to what they have to say.

Of course the idle rich don't have to sustain these networks, they could live much more modestly to be sure, but then thousands of people would be out of work, and the people who care about elite social activities would have to find other forms of media to entertain them.

So distressing, the items that trend on AppleNews.

As unimaginative as such pastimes may seem, a democratic conscience should try to tolerate them, assuming they don't imperialistically express themselves, or attempt to squash integral freedoms.

The world of Downtown Abbey is both resourceful and respectful.

Model worker/management relations.

Perhaps too prim and polished.

Remarkably cohesive bonds.

Napszállta (Sunset)

Dreamlike exploration observing radical tradition, patient determined movements discovering reticent clues, modest celebrity cultivating passage instinctual grace establishing ties, temperate precipitation intuitively encompassed, like Napszállta (Sunset)'s surreal backgammon, and curious Írisz Leiter (Juli Jakab) keeps rolling double sixes.

She would have been an heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's most prestigious millinery shop if grand misfortune hadn't necessitated alternative fortunes.

The new owner still supplies elegant hats to fashionable royals, and one of his resident artists will perhaps serve at court one day.

But it's not that simple, not quite so clear cut, so homely.

It's a different time, just before the outbreak of World War I, and the aristocracy and the people are expressing themselves confrontationally, neither group willing to accept the other's terms, destructive conflicts having arisen consequently.

The film and myriad other sources truthfully suggest the upper crust was none too kind to its workers of the day, and the people had no means to hold them to account.

Írisz's brother, in hiding and displeased with the corruption, has abandoned peaceful methods of persuasion; she's caught between his anger and the traditions of her artistic heritage.

She's just moved to Budapest and doesn't understand what's happening, wandering somnambulistically between the two parties, accessing highly secretive and exclusive realms without censure, maladroitly assured that peace is ecumenical.

Even though her family was well thought of, and her name is widely known and respected, it's still quite improbable that she would be able to proceed so freely, to go wherever she wants at whatever time.

Thus the dreamlike qualities of the narrative, the intense nightmarish revelations accentuated by obsessive close-ups.

Napszállta's more like grim realistic fantasy than lively magical realism, its chaotic combative testaments composed in dismal haunting fairy tale.

Mátyás Erdély's cinematography creates sombre phantasmagorical confusion that asymptotically incarnates horror, thereby reflecting the terrifying nature of the times, wherein which nothing seems concrete or stable.

But it's still loosely grounded inasmuch as you know where you are and what's transpiring, or at least know as much as Írisz, who knows close to nothing at all.

The total absence of concerned mediators intensifies the conscious anarchy, as does the lack of conversation or explanation, as if a child's on its own for the first time, lost and leading in Twin Peaks's Black Lodge.

Napszállta's bewildered sincerity magnetically draws you in, substituting nausea for lucidity with morose desperate conjecture.

The effect is nauseating at times so it's difficult to take the whole way through, but that doesn't mean its aesthetic isn't uniform, nor its ambivalence, inarticulate.

Bold filmmaking.

Grizzly style.