Adoption
Studio: The Criterion Collection
Apr 04, 2022 Web Exclusive
Márta Mészáros’ 1975 Golden Bear winner Adoption tells the story of two women from different generations whose lives intersect and unfold alongside one another. The film centers around Kata (Katalin Berek), a middle-aged factory worker who longs to have a child, much to the chagrin of her disapproving lover, Jóska (French New Wave regular László Szábo). When Anna (Gyöngyvér Vígh), a teenage girl who has run away from a nearby orphanage, comes to stay with her for several days, Kata develops a motherly affinity towards her.
Raised as an orphan in the former USSR, Hungarian director Mészáros has spent her career putting formative life experiences into the female protagonists of her films, depicting the hardships faced by women in post-Stalinist Hungary by merging the political with the personal. In Adoption, Mészáros draws parallels between the two female protagonists, both of whom are not given full agency of their lives due to patriarchal mandates: Kata, who is denied the option of having a child by her lover, and Anna, who is not allowed to marry her boyfriend Sandor (Péter Fried) due to disapproval by her biological father.
Kata is able to experience motherhood through her brief time with Anna, which ultimately brings her to the idea of adopting a child from the foster home Anna is placed at. Considered taboo in 1970s Hungary, adoption was not something commonly seen in films of that era. The mainstream rejection of portraying anything outside of the conventional nuclear family made Mészáros’ depiction of a woman whose ideas of family and motherhood deviate from the norm striking for its time.
Kata and Anna’s mutual understanding of each other’s condition as women in a repressive society leads them to forge a special bond which blurs the lines between mother-daughter relations and friendship. In a pivotal scene, they both go to lunch at a restaurant after Kata is jilted by Jóska; the two of them lovingly embrace each other, as their display of unbridled affection toward one another is shadowed by a group of onlooking men who dote upon Anna.
The two female protagonists’ rejection of societal norms is fortunately never represented in a heavy-handed fashion. In a 2019 interview with Mészáros included in the special features to the new Criterion edition of this film, she claims to be against “fake sentimentality.” The film’s taciturn, hardened characters reflect the Hungary of the time, and the few moments of heightened emotion and intimacy that occur are given greater thematic weight as a result.
Mészáros cleverly chooses to shoot her actors primarily in close-up, providing a window into the inner world of these characters who don’t always make their emotions readily available. Her background in documentary filmmaking shines through in several scenes, as Kata’s work life is depicted through expressive close-ups of the weathered hands and elbows of her fellow factory workers. Lajos Koltai’s low-contrast monochrome photography fittingly depicts the austerity of working-class Hungarian life, with the National Film Institute Hungary’s 4K restoration doing wonders in showcasing the film’s drab beauty.
1964’s Blow Ball, an early short film work of Mészáros, is a very fitting supplement on Criterion’s new edition of Adoption, showcasing the director’s affinity for depicting the lives of lonely children living on the fringes of society. A video essay by film scholar Catherine Portuges provides an insightful and concise look into the filmography of Mészáros, whose name is perhaps not as well known in the West as her fellow Hungarian auteurs Miklós Janczó and Béla Tarr.
Also available on the new Criterion edition of the film is the hour-long 1979 documentary Márta Mészáros: Portrait of the Hungarian Filmmaker, which provides an intimate glimpse into the prolific filmmaker’s life work up to that point, as well as a 2019 interview with Mészáros, who reflects on Adoption and its historical Golden Bear win (it was the first film by a female director to win the prestigious award) upon its screening at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival in the Classics Section.
(www.criterion.com/films/31237-adoption)
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