White Palms (2006)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Great Film overall

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

So, I've recently seen this movie, and have very mixed feelings about it. It's like 2 different movies, and as such, has its ups and downs.Long story short: it is the story of Dongó (Zoltán Miklós, Hajdú), a Hungarian gymnast, whose career had been broken in two, due to a childhood accident. 19 years later, he starts to rebuild his life in Canada, where he becomes a trainer, but the shadows of his past still haunt him. He commits physical abuse against a child under his care, and almost expelled from the gym club for that. His only chance to redeem himself is to take care of, and train Kyle, a promising, but utterly stubborn and rebelling teenager gymnast, the country's greatest hope for the next Olympic games. The story's last quarter takes place at a world championship in Hungary, where we simultaneously learn the happenings of the past, which led to giving up the protagonist's career, and how he looses the championship, but finding some moral remedy for himself. In the closing scene we see Dongó as a member of the world-famous Cirque du Soleil.Let's start with the good one. Parts, taking place in the 80's are phenomenal. The stories of young Dongó (Orion Radies) are full of with throat-gripping scenes about childhood abuse, parents forcing their child to fulfill the parents' dream, the physical and psychical breaking of the gymnasts so they can be the best of the best. Even more appalling (and aggravating), how the parents assisted to the abuse (especially rough scene the one with the whipped boy, whose father, a state intelligence agency's member sat down and watched the whole thing, like nothing happened). These scenes are clearly from the childhood memories from the writer/director (Szabolcs Hajdu). Acting is superb, Puma, the trainer (Gheorghe Dinica), though not as frightful, as, for example, Fletcher in Whiplash, still delivers the character greatly.And now, the low parts. The story-line in the 2000's is nowhere near as well-made, as the first half of the movie. The whole situation feels overly made-up, and you cannot escape the feeling, that they just connected 2, completely independent story-lines, just to make the movie longer. Kyle's character and motivation are hardly fleshed out. Drives behind adult Dongó's actions are also poorly portrayed, and though Hajdu (the writer and director's brother) physically suits for the role, his acting is nothing to write home about. The same can be said about the Canadian gym club leader, who looks a bit fake and exaggerated. The ending is also somewhat confusing, but acceptable. The movie itself is also a bit hypocrite. Upon the commitment of physical abuse, the club leader scolds Dongó, that this is completely not OK. As if abuse (physical and psychical) was a thing of the past. However, abuse remains even today, in almost every branch of the competitive sport. Now, the main drive is not the national (or personal) pride, but the money of the sponsors, and still, the expectations of the parents.Even though, I would like to praise the movie for letting the people know about the harsh and unforgiving regime of the world of the professional sport - or at least a tiny slice of it. It helps you to realize, how many broken childhood, mentally and emotionally disfigured juvenile men and women are behind the medals of the Olympic and world championships. And it successfully convinced me to encourage my children to do sports, but keep them the hell away from the professional sport, if I want to grow mentally healthy adults out of them.

I was very impressed by this movie. The story itself as well as the atmosphere, pictures, music... As a former sportsman I recognize the gym environment with all that old equipment from 80's and the modern one in Canada as very real and realistic. After the film I read that two main actors were athletes. Knowing this before, I would expect their acting performance week, but they were great, even the small boys. I was impressed, because the theme is my personal, but from the movie-making-point of view I admired especially the cut and lights in the circus/competition scene. Thanks to the sportsmen in leading roles, I did not have to watch usual cutting when the actor starts to run - cut - stunt makes a trick, so all the scenes from the gym looked very natural. For me very balanced work in all possible aspects.However I am afraid that the movie can better address sport or gymnastics people. I spoke with normal spectators after the film, and those stayed untouched.

I loved this movie and it was the best one I saw at the Toronto International Film festival. I appreciate the effort and detail at capturing the child abuse and then conveying it to the audience. Especially the scene where young Dongo goes home to visit his parents at Christmas time and the parents ask him how the marks got on his body. After failing them to believe that he didn't do anything wrong and was hit for no reason, he makes up a story about throwing a knife and then they believe him. I just couldn't get over the closeness I felt with the main character. This movie is great for audiences of all ages especially for anyone who needs that nudge to believe that they are alright just the way they are.

The traditions in East and West for training gymnasts have been long known but perhaps never more starkly portrayed than in White Palms.Based on autobiographical elements involving his brother (and the film's star), Hungarian director, Szabolcs Hajdu, brings us a tale of a gold medal standard gymnast, initially training at age ten under a regime of brutal corporal punishment, then later adapting with difficulty to very different attitudes in Calgary, Canada.As a boy, Dongo (played by athlete Zoltán Miklós Hajdu), receives little mercy in the hands of his trainer. The boys are asked to line up, but Dongo's feet are a fraction over the drill line, and he is punished with a blow from the side of a sword which leaves a blood-stained bruise on his thigh. When questioned, he tells his parents that he has thrown a knife at the girls, as they think he is lying when he claims his punishment was only for a minor incident. Parenting seems authoritarian and distant, although they don't hesitate to show his athletic skills off to relatives, and Dongo is forced to 'perform.' A background song later intones, "Summer has flown, far has it gone, over, all over, and I still question why." For Dongo and his classmates, it must seem that the joys of summer have eternally left their lives; and when he arrives late one day for practice, fearing the chastisements that will surely follow, he runs away.In the Canadian scenes, shortcomings of the Western system are equally challenging. With little in the way of sanctions for unruly students, teachers are stretched to cope with rudeness and laziness. Through a friendship with a younger athlete, Dongo not only learns to look at the world through new eyes, but finds a part of himself that has long been abandoned.White Palms is carefully edited to juxtapose more than one edge-of-the-seat moment. Tension is skilfully built into a story that is part documentary, part drama, and casting real gymnasts adds to the feeling of authenticity. Stark contrasts in the use of colour emphasise isolation - cold bluish tones for the scenes in Hungary are punctuated only with the bright red of the girls' outfits (in a sectioned-off area of the gym). Before going to Canada, Dongo's only venture into the latter world of brightness is when he is humiliatingly punished, providing a spectacle for the girls. The soundtrack has some haunting songs, although I felt the opening music was off-key - possibly intentionally - which I found a bit off-putting.White Palms brings some emotion-laden content to a fairly dry subject, as well as providing useful contrasts between the former Soviet bloc and the modern Western way of thinking. It might not make the mainstream market, but is a very watchable contribution from Eastern European cinema.