What The Film “Sunshine” Teaches Us About Marriage

On István Szabó’s “Sunshine,” and a dying institution.

Marriage unites and crushes families. István Szabó’s Sunshine chronicles three marriages that deteriorate the Sonnenschein family.

Initially, these bonds forge prosperity and love, which maintain optimism amongst the chaos in unstable Hungary. However, the distrust, patriarchy, and deceit fundamental to marriage as an outdated, religious institution crumble this hope, leaving Ivan Sonnenschein, the narrator, as the lone survivor.

The marriages

The three marriages renew happiness within the Sonnenschein's and promise a glowing future.

The film precedes the marriage between Emmanuel, Ivan’s great-grandfather, and Rose Deutsch with a violent explosion, which ends his father’s life. Their relationship is not detailed; however, Szabó suggests the marriage’s immense palliative effect by juxtaposing the news with information about Emmanuel’s burgeoning distillery business.

Rose’s affection is Emmanuel’s “Taste of Sunshine”; she is the “herbal tonic” that enlightened his life and produced two children, his “greatest achievements.” However, Szabó distorts this utopian image of love with the couple’s only private moment in the film. Here, Rose angrily decries: “Maybe you can talk to your Sarah Bettelheim like that, but not to me! Not to me! I’m your wife!” This subtle detail suggests that even the most overtly conservative and traditional marriage in Sunshine disguises a layer of mistrust.

Marriage is a dying institution

This doubt stems from heteronormative marriage itself, which necessitates a husband and a wife. This spousal essentialism attaches Rose firmly to her title, “wife.”

This exposes marriage’s first, broad weakness: it causes spouses to depend on each other emotionally. Sarah Bettelheim, Emmanuel’s cousin, threatens Rose’s position in the relationship. Her underlying worries mutate into paranoia, causing her sudden outburst. This couple exemplifies the inherent distrust that haunts even the oldest, seemingly most secure marriages.

Rose’s outburst follows her son, Ignatz’s announcement of the film’s second marriage, between him and Valerie, his sister-cousin. Ignatz learns that to rise as a Central Court judge, his Jewish heritage, his last name Sonnenschein, must be hidden and forgotten.

This existential decision challenges what brought the family prosperity and stability to further Ignatz’s self-interest. Predictably, the imbalance is met with marriage.

Together, the newly united couple has enough strength to gaily change their names to “Sors”, meaning, “prophecy, fate, destiny, task.” The Sors’ fate is downfall, a collapsing marriage paralleling the loss of Emperor Franz-Joseph, Emmanuel Sonnenschein, and the First World War.

The role of patriarchy

This failure begins with Ignatz. He is a judge: a symbol of power, elitism, professional success, loyalty to the system, and absolute control. This is marriage’s second weakness: when two self-interests diverge, one dominates the other into subservience.

In other words, patriarchy taints marriage’s ideal image of reciprocity and assurance by systematically oppressing women. Valerie is a free spirit, “a wildflower” who expresses herself through photography. Ignatz’s desire for regulation in his life, violently exemplified when he rapes Valerie, cages her as “a loyal subject” rather than a free person. Only after years of separation, of freedom, does Valerie see clearly through her camera lens at Ignatz, “a man without feeling” and a symbol of patriarchal control, fixedly entrenched by marriage.

The nature of Ignatz’s son Adam Sors’ marriage to Hannah Wipler is plugged with deceit. Although romantic and spontaneous, Adam’s pursuit of Hannah, a married woman, is only one step in his obsession for social stature, athletic glory, and recognition. If Ignatz’s flaw was power, then Adam’s was personal pride.

Adam’s fencing conquest coerces him into converting to Christianity, burying his family’s heritage indelibly, to compete at the highest echelons of fencing. He disingenuously rejects the stability found in the family’s Jewish traditions, refuses his old Jewish Civic Club team, and even espouses anti-Semitism. The previous marriages, steeped in Jewish ideals, died of mistrust and oppression. Stripped of religious fidelity and honesty, marriage continues to fail.

Like his career, Adam’s marriage is deceitful. He uses his charm and success to violate the sacredness of another man’s marriage for his own self-interest. Furthermore, his love for Hannah is fatuous and insincere, a tool for bolstering Adam’s pride.

The marriage’s dishonesty continues through Adam’s affair with his sister-in-law, Greta. He must keep the affair secret to maintain his ostensible integrity and reputation, further adding to the illusion.

Without religious sincerity, marriage becomes a tool for abusing the naïve, which through deceit advances man’s self-interest. This obsession for power leaves Adam Sors frozen to death, desperately clinging to his status and pride.

The importance of clarity

The three marriages produce Ivan Sors, a policeman whose most committed relationship is a lusty affair with Major Carole Kovács.

Without a spouse to guide him, Ivan struggles to lead a double religious life in Communist Hungary. Firstly, he prosecutes suspects for being fascists who passively allowed comrades to be executed, the crime Ivan committed in the Nazi labor camp. Furthermore, Ivan begins hunting and indicting Jewish people suspected of leading a Zionist conspiracy in Hungary. Both function as contradictions of Ivan’s personal identity, creating an existentially confused character.

At first, the film suggests that despite marriage’s pitfalls, it serves as a guiding light for lost individuals, giving them purpose and direction. However, what saves Ivan Sors is clarity, not marriage.

An aging, divorced Valerie teaches Ivan clarity when she says “Politics has made a mess of our lives. Still, life was beautiful. I’ve enjoyed waking every morning. I’ve always tried to photograph what’s beautiful in life.” Valerie has lived the majority of her adulthood unmarried and understands that simplicity and self-integrity can replace the artificial direction that marriage provides.

After this lesson, Valerie dies and Ivan perceives a new life: an independent existence that splits from material dependence on other people. Ivan becomes free of others and the institutions they propagate, allowing Ivan to change his name and identity without extrinsic pressure.

Conclusion

Marriage brings joy. It gives direction in people’s lives and security in their statuses. However, the three generations of marriage in the film, and by extension Hungary’s historic infatuation with Communism in the mid-20th Century, buckled under the outdated institution’s inherent mistrust, patriarchy, and dishonesty. The film’s champion is ultimately Ivan Sonnenschein, a thriving bachelor, who finds love and success from within.