Peter Hegedus’ new film, My America, combines humor, introspection and the complex connections of the human family to bring us to an examination of the current integration of the American Dream. Seen in North Charleston, SC at the Greater Park Circle Film society, the film gave us first the story of the Hungarian Director, his life touched by both his country’s brutal history and the projected images of the American cinema.
Exiled to Australia, Hegedus beings a search for the America he believed in from the movies, of super heros, justice and freedom. He speaks to people on five continents and enters the challenges of their lives. The idea of America morphs with each new context.
The invasion of Iraq shows an America capable of making huge mistakes with unforeseen circumstances. The crash of 2008 shows and economy which isn’t working, dragging formerly middle class people into shelters and on to the street.
The film has a lively visual style, punctuated with humor and animation. All the great American symbols are here. However as the film closes in on the present, it gets harder to say what it all means. Ultimately, we have to admit that is a question we all have to answer tomarrow.
Hegedus is bicycling his film across America now and it is a pilgrimage fraught with love, dread and hope. In Charleston on Good Friday before a holiday weekend I was embarrassed to be part of an audience of only 12. As we close in on what is sure to be a bitterly contested national election, it would have been better if all the seats were full. We had a great discussion afterwards. It's clear this film is a labor of love, the Director's attempt to render part of our world comprehensible. It is worth seeing.
History, for those who known it, has a terrifying capacity to enmesh ordinary people. You can’t pick your family or your history. If your Grandfather was the communist prime minister of Hungary during the revolution there in the 1950s, and called Russian tanks in on his own people, that has consequences. It seems simple until you put that beside Obama’s decision to order more troops to Afghanistan and realize how much of the script may be written for us by what has gone before.
The troubled veteran of combat in Afghanistan, the desperate refugee in Kenya and the frustrated people in Iran all want something from America. So does Hegedus. The question is do we know what it is and it is possible?
Without a complex understanding of history we are bound to be its victims. This film raises those questions, relieved with humor and compassion. It is well worth seeing, and it works well in a theatrical context, worthy of discussion.