The Confrontation

'What is the role of the individual in history?' asks one of the characters in Jancsó's film, set in the Hungary of 1947 and concerned with the problems of revolutionary tactics, this time posed for a group of students. The Confrontation has more talk than is usual in Jancsó's films, precisely because its form is that of a debate on revolutionary tactics, though of course there is the usual recourse to the specifically Hungarian marching, dancing and folk-song rituals which make his movies continually seductive.