Sometimes the things of politics are actually the things of the heart. It's summer in Budapest and student Abel (Adonyi-Walsh Gáspár) is about to take his final exams. His parents repeatedly urge him to study thoroughly, as today one can no longer achieve anything in Hungary without a higher school qualification. And in fact, Abel has most of the subjects pretty well under control – he only knows next to nothing about history, and unfortunately he can't concentrate on studying at the moment. Because, as we learn from the subtitle of the first chapter of this epic film: on Monday Abel realizes that he is in love.
However, his classmate Janka (Lilla Kizlinger) doesn't want to know anything romantically about her school friend and instead makes a clumsy declaration of love to the married history teacher Jakab (András Rusznák). We follow these protagonists, as well as a whole series of other supporting characters, through their everyday lives for a while, getting to know their lives and their political beliefs, before Gábor Reisz's script puts its cards on the table late on and reveals its actual central conflict .
Because of a forgotten pin and a motiveless total refusal, Abel (Adonyi-Walsh Gáspár) suddenly becomes the subject of a huge media campaign.
But first we learn a lot about the political dividing lines that run through Hungarian society. For example, Abel's father György (István Znamenák) is a supporter of President Viktor Orbán and his national-conservative Fidesz party. He had a heated argument with the liberal Jakab over these political differences at a recent parents' evening. He, in turn, suffers from the conditions under the right-wing government and in his free time films interviews with the survivors of the anti-Soviet uprising of 1956 for a documentary that is never finished. However, it doesn't really work that well, as in the conversations he likes to try to almost literally prompt the veterans with his own view of what's happening.
The central escalation in the plot of “An explanation for everything“, however, begins in a very casual moment. When he appears for his high school exams, Abel is wearing a patriotic pin on his jacket. It is worn everywhere on national holidays and serves as a symbol of nationalist Fidesz supporters throughout the rest of the year – basically the Hungarian equivalent of the “MAGA” cap. Abel simply forgot to take it off before the exam, but is then asked about it by Jakab. He wants to know why he was wearing them – according to his own later statement, it was just a question of surprise and not a politically charged one. But is there anything in this polarized social climate that isn't politically charged?
Flared pin
In any case, Abel remains silent during the exam. Whether he actually knows the answers or not, whether he is keeping silent out of protest, and if so, against whom or what exactly, remains to be seen – in any case, despite good grades in all other subjects, he fails. An exceptional case, something that, as we learn, only happens once every few years in these trials. There is even a discussion among the staff as to whether the boy could simply be allowed to pass despite his complete refusal – his case is simply not provided for in the system.
A dynamic of its own develops when Abel tells his father about the incident regarding the pin. Jakab only failed him because the needle identified him as the son of a “stupid Fidesz voter,” Abel claims. And this story then takes on a life of its own: György tells it to his doctor, he tells it to his taxi driver, and finally it is heard by the young journalist Erika (Rebeka Hatházi), who uses it to make a big cover story for a right-wing daily newspaper. Patriotic young man bullied by a depraved liberal teacher – the kind of story that always and everywhere is grist for the mill of outraged masses.
“An Explanation for Everything” is not only told in an amazingly epic way, but also has a lot of visual ideas.
However, it also suits the Fidesz government to give one to the liberal forces in the school system, and so a lot of pressure is being put on the principal and on Jakab. Abel's exam is canceled and it is to be re-examined in front of the eyes of the press. Jakab, seething with rage, complains that there is nothing that one cannot get away with in this country. But can and does Abel really want to keep up his lie until the end – especially when Janka also takes him to task for it? And why was he really silent? Is there a reason for it, an explanation for everything? Or isn't everything becoming more and more complicated – an unmanageable network of spoken and unspoken motives that we perhaps don't always know ourselves?
“An Explanation for Everything” is a beautiful film, precisely because some things in it remain a little vague, a little intangible until the end. Even if one might assume so based on its basic conflict, it is not a film that draws a simple political fault line, then spells it out and divides the protagonists into good and evil. It's more like, to use Jean Renoir's masterpiece “The Rules of the Game”, everyone always has their reasons. György is not a rabble-rousing fascist, but in his own way also despairs of contemporary Hungary and tries to keep things going locally. When his employee tells him that he wants to emigrate to Denmark due to the local conditions and the growing hatred everywhere, he only has criticism – after all, who would be left to improve the conditions if everyone left?
The Orbán system
And on the contrary, Jakab does not automatically have a clean slate because he is portrayed as a liberal Orbán opponent. Instead, he too is above all a human being, with his own contradictions, narcissisms and inadequacies. Perhaps “An Explanation for Everything” outlines, above all, the perfidy of a system that feeds on the constant deepening of these divisions between people who, in principle, want the best and each of whom would not even consider that they could be part of something that is socio-politically wrong be.
Of course, that's exactly how populist, authoritarian governments work, by continually fomenting this division and this division into good and evil – even at the price of the truth, as Gábor Reisz's film makes unmistakably clear. And so the accusation that has occasionally been made against the film that a certain political relativism ultimately undermines the positions of Orbán and Fidesz comes to nothing. Rather, “An Explanation for Everything” explores the reasons why people come to sometimes have diametrically different political beliefs. Instead of demonizing these people from the outset, it's about a system that thrives on fueling their hatred of one another. This is precisely what “An Explanation for Everything” ruthlessly exposes – the Orbán system. And anyone who doesn't understand this difference runs the risk of falling victim to such strategies themselves.
Conclusion: An epic, clever film that uses its multi-perspective narrative to tell a media scandal in contemporary Hungary under the national-conservative Orbán government – and in such a complex way that it manages to expose the perfidies of the system without demonizing its protagonists. And what sounds like a heavy subject actually comes across as surprisingly light-hearted – almost a summer film!
We saw “An Explanation for Everything” at the 19th Around the World in 14 Films Festival.