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The Romanian New Wave, known for naturalistic depictions of life in the country, has given us some truly memorable gems in the last few years. Tuesday, After Christmas, though not of the same caliber as say 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, 12:08 East of Bucharest, California Dreamin’, Tales from the Golden Age, etc., is nonetheless another feather in the country’s cap. A tale on adultery and the aftermaths of its revelation, the film is about a middle-aged married man with a doting daughter, who has fallen in love with a pretty and much younger lady. Despite the seemingly lurid theme, it has portrayed the events and the characters as utterly and unspectacularly quotidian, as a consequence of which the dynamics and the interactions are both believable and subtly disquieting. The fact that the revelation takes place around the time of Christmas – an occasion otherwise marked by celebration, happiness and familial bonding, has made this movie quietly resonating, heartbreaking and powerful as well. Minimalistic and intensely realistic in nature, the film is largely bereft of any background scores or quotable dialogues, has made great use of gripping long takes, and is filled with exceedingly naturalistic performances.
Director: Radu Muntean
Genre: Drama/Family Drama
Language: Romanian
Country: Romania
The Romanian New Wave has given us some of the most brilliant films of the last decade. And Cristian Mungiu, who made the devastating 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, has continued in the tradition by collaborating with 4 other directors for Tales from the Golden Age, a seemingly light but a decidedly black comedy on life in the Ceausescu regime. The film comprises of 6 chapters – short films, if you will – depicting the various facets of everyday life under the draconian rule, with all their irreverence, ironies, silliness and banality, and are filled with the kind of caustic wit and absurdist, wry, tar-black humour that Romanian films like 12:08 East of Bucharest and California Dreamin’ have made the country’s own. The tales, though of mundane, tragi-comic existences of common people, have been presented as urban legends of sorts, and have been captured through brilliant performances, sharp storytelling and naturalistic cinematography. Most of the seemingly innocuous stories end badly for their protagonists, yet what remain are their humanism, and biting commentaries on the socio-political times they lived in. The shorts include the disastrous preparation of Ceausescu’s arrival in a small village, the preparation of a party-sponsored photograph that again ends on a hilarious note, the innovative attempts of a family to slaughter a live pig without much raucous, a laconic truck-driver who tries to earn a few extra bucks by selling eggs, a young girl who is inadvertently drawn into a minor racket involving empty bottles, and a zealous party-member who tries bringing in education in a remote village.
Directors: Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, Hanno Hofer, Ioano Uricaru, Razvan Marculescu
Genre: Drama/Black Comedy/Social Satire/Political Satire
Language: Romanian
Country: Romania
Corneliu Porumboiu’s sophomore effort is in many ways akin to 12:08 East of Bucharest, his brilliant debut feature – it has captured the mundane ordinariness and ironies of life with the kind of candour that has almost come to typify Romanian New Wave cinema, has as its latent topic post-Causescu Romanian bureaucracy and hangover, and a title that doesn’t fail to catch one’s attention. And though the off-balancing humour of his first feature has been heavily toned down, the movie is certainly not completely bereft of mordant observations and commentary that are sure to incite a few chuckles despite the deliberately drab tone. This anti-thriller, so to speak, is a police procedural focusing on the pangs of “conscience” that a cop is facing while at his latest assignment. Contrary to popular genre conventions and nearly bordering on the ludicrous, “its climactic scene”, as A.O. Scott has aptly put it, “is not a chase or a shootout, but rather a tense, suspenseful session of dictionary reading”; and that, captured through long, static takes, forms the most singularly memorable part of the movie. The director, through a slow, uneventful plotline, has captured the minutest details of the protagonist’s job, thus bringing forth the banalities and absurdities of life around him. And by the way, Vlad Ivanov’s startling cameo as the police chief reminded me of his explosive turn in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Police Drama
Language: Romanian
Country: Romania
Katalin Varga, my second (and possibly my final) movie viewing at the ongoing Kolkata Film Festival, is a well-made, brooding, near-Dostoevskian tale of revenge and redemption from Romania. The bleak yet emotionally resonant exterior, art-house flavour, and distinctly folksy/old-world feel, belie the fact that this is the debut feature of Peter Strickland, who, interestingly, happens to be British by birth. A good revenge story isn’t necessarily one loaded with an ingenuous plot and high-octane thrills. Katalin Varga, which is about the eponymous lady’s bid to get even with a couple of men from her past, lies in the domain of such movies as Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Revanche, where violence lurks just around the corner, ready to explode at the first given opportunity. In fact, the fate that Katalin finally meets reminded me about the climax in the Park Chan-Wook work, while its philosophical undertones were reminiscent of the Gotz Spielmann film. The luscious Hilda Peter, in the role of the wronged woman out to seek justice, has brought in the right mixture of sexual undercurrent, motherly care and latent anger in her layered performance. Agreed, the screenplay could have been more gripping; however, the crisp length ensured everyone hung in till the movie’s strong and satisfactory finale.
Director: Peter Strickland
Genre: Drama/Revenge Movie
Language: Romanian
Country: Romania
I might not have watched many Romanian movies, yet the few that I’ve seen are so good that The Death of Mr. Lazarescu might earn the least cookies of ‘em all. Yet, I must add, it is still good enough to be called a brilliant work of art. There aren’t any surprise endings in this movie, the title is clear enough. As soon as the movie begins, we see a lonely, cat-loving, hard-drinking, and slightly grumpy but otherwise good natured old man, suffering an apparently not so serious bout stomach and headache. And thus starts a deeply distressing odyssey where the titular Mr. Lazarescu is shuttled from one hospital to another, as his aches slowly and gradually start taking life threatening proportions. Shot in real time, the movie is a marvelous albeit documentary-style look at an otherwise mundane and unspectacular person living in Bucharest, which, like any teeming metropolis, is filled with cynicism, red tapism, insensitivity and hopelessness. Like its Romanian New Wave contemporaries, the movie is filled with unflinching, grim realism, and yet contains subtle doses of black humour, pathos and a deep sense of humanism. This exceptionally detailed and brilliantly enacted slice of life is at once a subversive and a humanitarian social commentary.
Director: Cristi Puiu
Genre: Drama/Slice of Life/Social Satire
Language: Romanian
Country: Romania
I’m really falling in love with Romanian cinema (Romanian New Wave if you will). There is a distinct and instantly recognizable flavour to their movies (be it 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, 12:08 East of Bucharest or this one, my last movie at 2008 Kolkata Film Festival) – grim and compelling realism, bold take on troubling socio-political issues, minimalist in composition and often deadpan satires. The first and only film of Cristian Nemescu (he died in a car crash while the movie was in post-production) California Dreamin’ (Endless) is an exceedingly enjoyable yet bitingly cynical fable set during the infamous Kosovo War. Brilliantly enacted by its ensemble cast, the movie presents a small Romanian village community and a group of American soldiers carrying NATO equipments, where each of the principal protagonists are driven by their own agenda (selfish or otherwise) – the Captain of the army group whose only concern is the deadline, the soft spoken Sergeant, the servile local Mayor striving to attract investments, the stationmaster who hates anything to do with America, his physically captivating and rebellious daughter, and the school nerd secretly in love with her. Despite the jerky camera motions or scrappy editing in the last third of the film, this is a powerful movie suffused with sharply observed insight, dark but enjoyable humour, a deep sense of pathos, and masterful interjections of satire and irony. The director’s untimely death is indeed a great loss for the world of cinema.
To read a more detailed review of the movie by me, click here.
Director: Cristian Nemescu
Genre: Drama/Comedy/Political Satire/Black Comedy/Ensemble Film
Language: Romanian
Country: Romania
12:08 East of Bucharest is a satirical and bitterly funny look at one of Romania’s most historic moments – the violent overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu. The movie, though, isn’t a historical fact-based documentation; rather, it is a mordant look at how the present rarely keeps track of the past, however important might they be insofar as the country’s historical determination is concerned. On the occasion of the sixteenth anniversary of the fall of the dictator, a small-time television channel owner attempts to find out whether the revolution ever took place at their town, with a Santa Claus dressing senile elderly man and a school teacher who is infamous in his community for his hard drinking, as the guests for the show. To make matters more ludicrous, every member, from the host and the guests to the dubious callers, have things other than the “revolution” on their minds. Filmed on a shoe-string budget and brilliantly enacted by the three protagonists, this is a movie that delights with its wry, deadpan humour and piercing insight. Though Ceausescu is a central theme for both, it hardly bears any resemblance to 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days; yet in their unflinching realism, audacity and bravado, they both represent the unheralded glory of today’s Romanian cinema.
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Political Satire/Farce/Slice of Life
Language: Romanian
Country: Romania
