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Sunshine

1999

István Szabó

Ralph Fiennes, Rosemary Harris, Rachel Weisz, Deborah Kara Unger ...

7.0

1,113

Drama The film follows a Jewish family living in Hungary through three generations, rising from humble beginnings to positions of wealth and power in the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire. The patriarch becomes a prominent judge but is torn when his government sanctions anti-Jewish persecutions. His son converts to Christianity to advance his career as a champion fencer and Olympic hero, but is caught up in the Holocaust. Finally, the ... [+]

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	Andrew Pulver The Guardian	"Szabo's movie offers an absorbing potted history of his native country, but the whole thing stands or falls on Fiennes' performance. This, truth to tell, only partly succeeds"	NEU
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"This is a movie of substance and thrilling historical sweep, and its three hours allow Szabo to show the family's destiny forming and shifting under pressure (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	A. O. Scott The New York Times	"[Many scenes are] both underdeveloped and overdone, as though Mr. Szabo, in his rush to interpret the history of Central Europe, couldn't be bothered to dramatize it (...) But it must be said that the ideas are interesting"	NEU
United Kingdom	William Thomas Empire	"An enthralling watch with a simple, powerful message (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	Time Out	"Szabó's characteristically dense, ambitious film is a little dry, conservative and (understandably) humourless. Yet it's an absorbing, weighty picture, which worries at still important ideas"	NEU
United States	Eddie Cockrell Variety	"There’s no denying the care and emotion in every frame of 'Sunshine' (...) [A] well-intentioned but never entirely engaging chronicle"	NEU
United States	Michael Wilmington Chicago Tribune	"An incredibly ambitious film and one of the most highly accomplished of the year."	POS

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