Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Munich)

January 19, 1999

Sueddeutsche Zeitung
By Tobias Kniebe

(The article starts with a sequence in the opera of Budapest.)

A tall, very earnest man steps in front of all the officers, his voice trembling with eagerness. "We thank comrade Stalin from the bottom of our hearts for having destroyed facsism all over the world", he calls out. "He leads us to a future world where all men are equal - without exploitation and humiliation - to the world of communism."

In his caravan (of a family's living-room's size), Ralph Fiennes is recovering from the strains of this oration. His face looks thin and fragile under his officers' cap - and although it is the cap of a fanatic anti-facsist, that look reminds immediately of his role as the KZ-commander in "Schindler's List". In those days, the "sexuality of the evil" (Steven Spielberg) was gleaming in his blue eyes. Today, there seems to be an unspoken reproach. At the moment, he is brooding over a description of his role, he is speaking slowly, groping, starting the sentences again and again. "This person needs a system to integrate himself, because of his deep desire to get accepted", he says - and characterizes by that all three male leading figures: grandfather Ignaz, father Adam and son Ivan Sonnenschein. Fiennes plays all of them - and doesn't need an extra make-up for that, because "The Taste of Sunshine" jumps from epoch to epoch and presents them all in their prime of life. Fiennes calls it a mere accident, that he has been an Hungarian already in "The English Patient". "I wanted to work with Istvan, because he is such a great humanist", he says. "His work is of an extraordinary honesty and wisdom. 'Oberst Redl' has been one of my favourite movies for a long time."

Istvan Szabo in his turn explains very detailed - in perfect English and on demand in German - why he wanted to make that movie by all means with Ralph Fiennes. "I was particularly interested in Ralph's fragility", he says. "In his eyes is a very special fragility. And he is absolutely normal - like the people in the audience." That fits to the certain weakness and delicay of all men in Szabo's movies - there is the actor in "Mephisto" who dares to get too close to the Nazis, or "Oberst Redl" who is too ambitous. In "The Taste of Sunshine" only the women keep their brains cool and the family together during the changes of politics, says Szabo.

(The article closes with a summary on Hungary's political systems and present problems.)