The greatest movie ever made..!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Hungarian director Szabolcs Tajdu's new film White Palms has its moments of excellence in a fairly uninteresting account of the life and career of a national gymnast named Miklos Dongo. Dongo is trained under a brutal and authoritative coach when he was very young. His life is changed when he suffers a serious non-sport related injury. He signs up to be a coach many years later and is forced to train Kyle Manjak, a young Canadian gymnast whose talent is immense but is lacking in discipline. Should he lash out on his student with the same brutality shown by his coach? Or should he stick to a softer approach? In the end, he decides to set an example by training rigorously together with Kyle and qualify themselves for the World Gymnastics Competition.Tajdu presents White Palms as two narrative threads of different timelines with the central focus on the character of Dongo. The present thread shows Dongo and Kyle together as coach and trainee respectively, and as opponents in competition. The 'flashback' thread shows the anguish and misery suffered by Dongo when he was under his diabolical coach. Both threads run back-and-forth with each other and it is difficult to see what the director wants to achieve. Only crossing the hour mark does White Palms become thematically clearer. The two threads eventually converge into a rousing climax of slow-motion, balletic images that suggest the fickle psychological state of Dongo, whose past comes back to haunt him.White Palms concludes in an inferential manner that is slightly odd. More questions will be asked than answers given out by the time the end credits roll. It tries to explain the psyche of Dongo by further revealing his character's actions. Some may see it as a proper closure for the film's lead character, but it is done half-heartedly that it loses most of its impact. White Palms is not quite consistent in terms of entertainment; it is sometimes resonant, sometimes a yawn. Yet it emphasizes rather successfully the importance of bonding in our lives and the courage to defend our dignity whenever threatened.SCORE: 7/10 (www.filmnomenon.blogspot.com) All rights reserved!

A really good film but one of the saddest films I've seen in a long time. Although the film was was released in 2006 I only saw it on Australian TV in August 2008. It was shown very late at night with a warning beforehand of child abuse which nearly put me off watching it. If this is not a true life story, I would guess that it must be based on one as it is so very credible. The choice of athletes and actors was good and the role of the coach who trained the young gymnasts was played menacingly well. What a horrible character and unfortunately there may be more than one of those in the real world. The parents were disgusting - I'd run away from home if they were mine. After all his misadventures, I hope that Miklós enjoyed his time with Cirque De Soleil in Las Vegas because by then, in my opinion, after all the hardships he endured he deserved to be treated as a very unique person.

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.