A choppy + soapish narrative of modern Hungary's sad history

Although this film got me interested in Hungary's rather sad history, as well as those distinctive uniforms from the regency period, I would have to describe it as essentially a choppy and soapish narrative of modern Hungary's sad history. I prefer to focus on the political and military aspects of the film instead of the silly romantic subplots. Not only was there open and violent displays of anti-semitism, but all those political upheavals with revolutions followed by counter-revolutions and followed again by more revolution. Until recent decades, one would think that Hungarian politics is a tragic dialetic cycle of conservatism versus socialism. In the first act (the polite Habsburg period), Hungarian society was anti-semitic but polite about it, like the rest of Europe. Then, all of a sudden, Hungarians started to display their anti-semitism very openly. Did this have to do with Hungary's defeat in World War One and how Jews were blamed for the surrender to the Allies? After Admiral Miklos Horthy's regency/dictatorship was replaced by the communist regime, the barbaric socialist bosses were just as anti-semitic as the old capitalist order that they sought to destroy. All the while, God knows how many Hungarians were dragged into show trials before meeting their final fates.

To mitigate the depressing aspects of Hungary's unstable political history, the story includes a series of steamy romantic stories that make your daily TV soaps look tame in comparison. A man taking his sister-in-law as his mistress??? It is VERY STEAMY because it looks so taboo. Having the lovely Rachel Weisz play the alluring sister-in-law also helps. I suppose this is the only way to keep the audience to stay tuned to the film so that the film's moral and political themes may perhaps reach some minds.

What I was most disappointed about was the short length of the film, which is really three films cobbled into one movie spanning 3 hours. This makes it a bit choppy for me because the movie switches to a new era and a new generation after I was just getting used to the previous era and generation. The whole thing would have worked better as a film trilogy or a six-hour TV miniseries.