An American Rhapsody

'An American Rhapsody' is a Hungarian movie made in 2001. And I never heard about it until recently. The story is about a family who escapes through the iron curtain and makes it to Los Angeles leaving their smallest daughter behind who has to wait 6 years until she can reunite with her real family.

Some said the movie is full with cliches and it is, but Americans do it a lot of burger. Suburban life is the same as the movie presents it. Strange but it seems that nothing really changed in the last 50 years here. The cars are more modern that's for sure, but the rest didn't change at all.

I met a couple of Hungarians here already. Well. no real friendships but we did meet. And many of them didn't speak Hungarian anymore, or they said that their parents came from Hungary around/before 1956 but they themselves never learned Hungarian. And I never really understood it. If I'll have children while I'm living abroad, I will teach them Hungarian. Even though we decide never to move back to Hungary. And still I'll try to make Hungarian the primary language in my home. I've seen a German family once, where the parents talked to the kids in German and they replied in English...

So after seeing the movie I now understand that people who had to escape from the country had a certain hatred towards their home country and they came to America where they had a hard time fitting in, and they've tried their best and in order to achieve that they had to loose the language. It is sad that so many people had to go through this, but now I think I understand.