Heroic Times (1 Star)

This is the 12th film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

It's another old film, not a re-release, but it was remastered for 4K last year. It's an animated film that was released in Hungary in 1984, based on an epic poem. Like "Loving Vincent", it was created by putting together a series of oil paintings that were painted over a period of four years. Unfortunately, it's not up to the quality of "Loving Vincent". Instead of strictly using 12 pictures per second, it makes a lot of short cuts. Sometimes the camera pans from left to right over a single scene. Some scenes are used a few times.

There's no dialogue in the film. The story is told in a voiceover by a narrator. It's about Toldi, the younger son of a knight. After the death of his father, his older son takes his place as a knight, even though Toldi is a better warrior. In the following 90 minutes (which seemed much longer) Toldi works his way up into the king's favour and becomes a great hero in battle. That would have been a good place to end the film, but we see that 20 years later times have changed. Knights no longer duel, it's just jesters putting on a show imitating knights.

Despite the remastering, the picture is still fuzzy. Look at the screenshot above. It hurt my eyes to watch it. And the story is uneven. It was a dull film that seemed to last forever. I was glad when it was over.