Teasers for the film said that Fliegauf (who has recently changed his name from Benedek to Bence) shot it based on a series of real-life murders in recent years committed with racist motives against Roma living in slums at the edge of villages. But the director has actually done much more than that: instead of showing the lowly acts of killing, he presented the environment where all this could happen and did actually happen. Because the killings ?only? happened in the moments after someone pulled a trigger. But racism, as well as everyday poverty with its resulting disadvantages (both trivial consequences and fears) have existed for a much longer time. And unless something happens, they will exist for many more years to come. But for something to happen, it is necessary to understand the current situation. And Just the Wind is a perfect tool for that.
Fliegauf?s film presents a fictional story, as we are told right at the start, about one day in the life of a Roma family. It is not immediately obvious, but one may suspect it, that what the film shows is actually the last day in their life. The mother wakes up at dawn and leaves for communal work, then she goes to clean at the local school. The teenage daughter goes to school, her younger brother avoids school and plays truant, the grandfather is sick in bed. (And the father is already in Toronto applying for refugee status for the family because of the earlier Roma murders.) Just the Wind starts at a point where most films never even get to: showing in an objective and simple way Roma as they live their everyday lives, in poverty, in demolished buildings without water supplies. Not as a socio-graphical curiosity, an almost exotic ethnic group. The highest level of tolerance is not simply the acceptance of difference but being indifferent to difference. Fliegauf pays equal emphasis to presenting good and bad traits of Roma and non-Roma characters. He does not shy away from presenting the bad decisions or character flaws of the Roma and neither does he show them as heroes when they commit good deeds. Just the Wind attempts to prove that these traits should be assessed objectively, and not in relation to the colour of the character?s skin. Only those who understand this will be able to look at an ethnic group not as a homogeneous unit. And only they can realise that even if three Roma have done harm to someone, it does not automatically mean that the fourth one, and the fourteenth one, will also do the same.
This results from the attitude that the film demonstrates and not the actions that it presents: the deep-rooted social conflicts that build up to a series of murders. In addition to creating strong atmosphere and captivating story bits, the film successfully presents the sense of fear that occupies a community which has been subject to several attacks. Strange noises at night and repeated sightings of a car with darkened windows enhance this fear. And the film also presents with unbelievable sensitivity some seemingly insignificant details that determine relations between the Roma and the non-Roma. A teacher?s rude remarks directed at a Roma girl, unfounded accusations, a bus driver who stops slightly away from the bus stop when he sees a Roma girl waiting in order to humiliate her and force her to run for the bus. At the same time, the non-Roma manager of communal works collects and donates a bag full of used clothes to a Roma mother and the film also shows aggressive Roma in a pub who are always ready to pick a fight. Fliegauf has a great sense for spotting and presenting together pieces of a mosaic that will give a clearer picture of the average Hungarian life situation than (perhaps) all other works of art made about this subject in the past. (One exception being a didactic dialogue between a racist and a non-racist police in one of the victims? home: one could precisely understand the situation even without such a dialogue.)
Every film director could come up with a solution for a bad situation but teaching a wise lesson would be completely useless. Yet, it is indeed necessary to find a solution to one of the most severe social problems (perhaps the single most severe problem) in contemporary Hungary. What Fliegauf has done using the tools of an artist would be impossible to outdo.
Instead of giving fish to the hungry, he offers them a fishing rod. Instead of giving two-sentence solutions, he offers a new way of thinking.
Author: Bálint Kovács
