Malmkrog (2020)

Sometimes the best conversations you can have are with people from vastly different backgrounds.  Be it from different financial status, religion, sociopolitical, age, or whatever sets you apart, just to see where they land on any topic of conversation.  In this Hungarian film, Malmkrog, we find ourselves nestled into a snowy little hillside manor in 20th century Transylvania with all different sorts of people hunkered down to get out of the cold.  We are introduced to the group of mostly bourgeois and the upper crust elite such as a Franco-Russian nobleman, a sternly christian young woman, a Russian general's wife, a middle-aged pessimist widow, and a few others who are all pretty much stuck in their ways, but still want to change each other's hearts and minds with well mannered conversation.  With over a 200 minute runtime, the feature jumps between various conversations in every combination of characters, who all keep steering the central thesis back to whether or not society can exist with or without the violence of war as an organizing factor.  Like any heavy topic such as the organization of modern society based around warfare, the group gets more and more heated as opinions are presented, voices are raised, and personal battles are waged in closed quarters.  Luckily for us though, the film version of Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov and his amalgamation of late 19th and early 20th century notions, keeps you engaged throughout and even gives us a little sneak peek of some man meat with a bare butt scene of Levente Nemes!