The story has two timelines. One transports viewers back to a western Hungarian village in 1953, where a descendant of an aristocratic family, Ákos, falls for a village girl, Mari. They try to escape to Austria together, but unfortunately with no success, and after being harassed by soldiers, Mari has to start a new life alone and pregnant in occupied Vienna.
The other storyline is in the present, unfolding the events through the recollections of old Mari, now a pensioner living in her old village. One day she gets a letter from Russia and falls into a coma. Her daughter Olga, a lawyer living alone in Vienna, comes back to care for her. Suspecting something about her mother's past isn’t quite right, she starts investigating. This is only a fraction of the story, as anything else would be a major spoiler. However, even the trailer foretells that Olga’s dad might not be who she thinks after all.
Making Aurora Borealis, Márta Mészáros was inspired by the invisible generation of children conceived by love or violence and born during the war or occupation. These children of conflict often did not know where they came from and were never told who their father was, as most of the time it was an occupying soldier. In the film, however, the character of the mother, Mari – portrayed old and young by two actresses, Mari Törőcsik and Franciska Törőcsik – is somewhat stronger, more sensitive and better conceived than that of the child struggling with identity crisis. All the same, Ildikó Tóth holds up well in that role.
“We cannot let our past ruin our present” – says Mari, holding onto her heavy secrets that no woman would like to bear. Even a few days after seeing Aurora Borealis, you are not entirely sure whether it is good that the truth surfaces eventually but at least the full meaning of the film title becomes more apparent. In a wider context, the film sends an important message: knowing our past and taking responsibility for it can not only benefit a family but, in the long run, society as a whole.
Although with the costumes, décor and cityscape the film puts great emphasis on authenticity, the horrors of war only provide a framework for the universal topics concerning women, such as vulnerability, sexual violence, conception, becoming a mother and independence, all valid questions in our world. Aurora Borealis is a slow film that is not at all perfect, but the acting, the secret, crucial questions and their answers, make viewers forget about occasional gaps in the script.
Aurora Borealis screens with original Hungarian audio and English subtitles at the Művész Cinema. Click here for more information.
