Faces in the Crowd
A drama of the Holocaust in Hungary tells a poignant family saga.

SUNSHINE
With Ralph Fiennes, Jennifer Ehle, Rosemary Harris, William Hurt
Written by Istvan Szabo and Israel Horovitz
Directed by Istvan Szabo

IN THE SPLENDIDLY WROUGHT, relentlessly sad, three-hour historical drama Sunshine, the shadowy Hungarian director Istvan Szabo doesn't spend any more time than necessary on the details of his nation's history during the years when his drama takes place. That, he seems to know, is why we have books and historians.

Rather, Szabo and his co-author, the playwright Israel Horovitz, make history profoundly intimate in the form of the Sonnenschein family, whose members live and die under the authorities of a benevolent emperor, a proto-fascist military, a brutal alliance with Hitler and, finally, mid-century Communism -- each of which proves to be no more concerned with "what the people want" than any other form of dictatorship.

Still, for a Jewish family like the Sonnenscheins -- their name means "sunshine" -- some dictators are better than others. The "liberal" Emperor Franz Joseph tolerates and even appreciates the Jews, as long as they don't talk about being Jewish. The military leaders after World War I tolerate them as well -- if they assimilate by adopting Hungarian names. The Nazis do what Nazis did, and in this particular tale, they teach us one more unthinkable way to make a man suffer and die. And the Communists -- well, as one man observes during the anti-fascist, anti-Semitic purges, from one form of tyranny to the next, it's the same old scapegoats time and again.

The Sunshine saga unfolds largely through the lives of three generations of Sonnenschein men, all of them played by the English actor Ralph Fiennes in a performance that never lets him rest. At the turn of the 20th century, Ignatz Sonnenschein is a bright and serious young lawyer who becomes a virtuous judge, although he has to change his family name to the more Hungarian-sounding Sors. His son Adam, a lawyer who becomes an Olympic fencing champion, makes even more compromises to keep the family out of the concentration camps. He doesn't quite succeed, and so it falls upon Adam's son Ivan to keep history from repeating itself for his generation. But he's a weak and frightened young man, and with the Communists in charge, he seizes upon some new opportunities.

Through all of this, the family nucleus is Valerie Sonnenschein, Ignatz's cousin and eventually his wife, played as a younger woman by Jennifer Ehle, and as a leonine matriarch by Ehle's mother, the redoubtable Rosemary Harris. Valerie gives up prayer in her youth but not her Jewish identity, embracing a fierce humanism that persists by willpower and fate. It's she who puts a finger upon the drama's bittersweet center: "Politics," she says wearily, speaking to the ages, "has made a mess of our lives.

This sort of resolute wisdom infuses Sunshine -- which Ivan Sonnenschein narrates from the start, so at least we know someone will survive. His stolid narration whisks us breathlessly through large chunks of history, allowing Szabo to focus his tight, cogent storytelling on dramatic turning points. Now and then, with documentary snippets, he blends the Sonnenscheins into Hungary's turbulent 20th century.

There's nothing new about this kind of movie, and there doesn't need to be, as long as the work remains more concerned with interiors than with spectacle. Szabo has made films since the early '60s -- he won an Oscar in 1981 for Mephisto -- and through most of his necessarily cautious career, he's had the Hungarian dictatorship watching him. Now that he's free of censorship, he refuses to be strident or political. He's a dramatist first in Sunshine, and the effect of his vigilance is thrilling to watch.

Beautifully filmed throughout Hungary, and gently scored by the composer Maurice Jarre, Sunshine features a cast of mostly British actors, who speak with such precision and delicacy that they create the illusion you're listening to dialogue in a foreign language. Their ensemble work produces myriad telling moments that allow us think about coming to terms with a 20th century that will never cease to haunt those who survived it.