Title: Orphan
Foreign Title: Arva
Year: 2025
Country: Hungary/France/Germany/UK
Language: In Hungarian with English subtitles
Director: László Nemes(II)
This period piece starts in 1949, when a shy and frightened 5-year-old child (Andor), is being reclaimed by a mother (Klara) who left him as an infant in a children’s home. The children’s home is being closed in keeping with the new communist government’s policy to send orphans to a state facility.
The story moves on, in Budapest, eight years later. A year after the Hungarian revolution was brutally put down with the Russians rolling tanks into Budapest. Andor is now thirteen. Klara is still holding on to a hope that her husband, who was sent to a concentration camp during the war, will return. She has instilled this hope and dream instilled in Andor. The pivotal point comes when the brutal and amoral man (Berend) who hid Klara during the war, finds her. It becomes apparent that Andor is the result of the price she paid for her protection. Ironically Andor’s and Klara’s wish for the return of the father has been fulfilled.
Klara (Andrea Waskovics) is more of an unwilling companion than a mother, stuck in a rut of unrealised hope. Thirteen-year-old Andor (Bojtorjan Barabas) is dangerously angry and emotionally self-indulgent. A frustrated friend of his prophetically observed that he ruins everything. Berend (Gregory Gadebois) is an abusive opportunist. These are not sympathetic characters.
The small story of Andor’s crisis in identity, loses its footing to the enormity of the compelling stories playing out in the background. The story of the hardships suffered by the people of Budapest are told by the background visuals; supply shortages, ruined infrastructure, the ever present brutal secret police with their unpredictable raids ( Razzias) and the not-so-subtle antisemitism.
The excellent cinematography of Matayas Erdely was as much of the story as the script, subtly exposing the conditions of post war and post revolution Hungary. Often the foreground was shaded, and the background was brightly lit.
The last scene of the film is with Andor’s turbulent family stuck on a motionless ferris wheel, unable to escape their fate. Perhaps this is a metaphor for the people of Hungary who remained stuck until the Soviet army left in 1990.
