Very best movie i ever watch

Good concept, poorly executed.

Awesome Movie

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Margit (Nastassia Kinski) and Peter (Tony Goldwyn) live in Hungary during the early fifties. As Peter relates, a good deal of his friends have been sent to prison, for no good reasons, and his publishing business shut down. In addition, Margit experienced a traumatic loss which changed her forever. Therefore, they make plans to escape from communist Budapest and immigrate to America. They plan to take their two daughters along but a last minute, horrendous glitch makes it necessary for them to leave their one year old daughter, Suzanne, behind and in the care of a peasant farm couple in the Hungarian countryside. Climbing under barbed wire and around spotlights, they make their escape with their older daughter. Yet, understandably, when they make it to Los Angeles, Margit and Peter never stop writing letters to government officials, in order to secure the immigration of their little lost girl. Suzanne, meanwhile, loves her adoptive parents and simple home. Yet, when she is six, Suzanne is torn away from the only mother and father she knows and sent to America to meet and live with her blood relatives. After such turmoil for everyone, will happiness follow? This is one great movie that will have you crying at the beginning, the middle, and the end. It is based on a heartbreaking true story and it is certainty that any viewer will be tremendously moved by its happenings. The cast is stupendous, with Kinski and Goldwyn doing a wonderful job as the brave but sorrowful parents. Scarlett Johanssen plays Suzanne as she ages, and she is terrific, but so is the little lady who plays the younger version left behind in Hungary. Then, too, the settings, costumes, cinematography, script and direction are all top notch. In summary, no one who loves motion pictures should really miss this film. It has a story that grabs the viewer by the heart and never, ever lets go.

This is a story of love, under the background of the cold war. When Suzanne reached adolescent age, she was in crisis of her identity, and she traveled to Hungary. During the trip she knew how much selfless love she had from the adopting parents, grand mother and particularly her own mother to whom she was defiant. Knowing that she was loved, she could overcome the crisis. I recall the days of my daughter's crisis in the same age with Suzanne. Though the film has historic locale of Hungary in the cold war, what the film portrays is something universal which has strong power to make people empathize. Scarlett Johansson acted Suzanne in her adolescent age very well. But the adopting parents were most impressive. If I loved my daughter his way she would not have a crisis.

This is the definition of a Norfolk Library Film. No ones' heard of it. Now really Norfolk Library does have some films that are popular but they also have tons of films I know or care little about. I got this only 'cuz it had Larisa Oleynik in the credtis. What is she doing there? She has like 2 minutes of screen time. Not that this is anything new to films, but I was hoping to actually hear more than 4 sentences from her. Back to the Film...A family wants to leave Hungary 'cuz it's communist. Great Idea but their youngest girl gets left behind. She eventually gets to LA when she's 6 years old but doesn't like it there. By the time she's 15 she hates everyone in her life and wants to go back to the simple world she left beind. This could be really good for a drama, and I'M SURE the real experience was better than the movie. This film was never sure where it wanted to go, starting in Black and White (ala Schindler's List) then switching to color. 99% of the problems that arise are because the mom never tells her daughter about what made Hungary so bad. When the girl does go back, she finds out any ways. What a waste of a plane ticket. PS: That bridge is cool. It's the same picture as on a "Greater Vision" Album called "Far Beyond This Place"

1st watched 7/25/2004 - out of 10 (Dir-Eva Gardos): Heartfelt story of Hungarian immigrant family's trek to the U.S without their baby and the trials that came after this to reunite the whole family. This is definitely a story written from a point of view that understands all the feelings that came with this situation. I'm curious whether the writer/director 'Eva Gardos' was either one of the ones involved or was very close to the family. I digress, anyway, this is a well-done portrait of these lives and one of the few films that doesn't have a bias towards the Hungarian way of live as opposed to the American way of life. What seems to be most important is a feeling of closure felt by the child which she reaches at the end of the film. When the parents left Hungary, the child became a well-loved foster child and then was stolen by the real grandmother and sent to America to be a part of her real family. The discovery of the child's real upbringing is most important and this is where the story goes from here. Unique slow-moving feature film with an uplifting final message with well-done portrayals from the main characters but some very bad acting from subordinate players that doesn't deter from the story.