Rolling Romanian New Wave Thread

Or: some people are meanos.

Also, highlight scene for me: when she returns from disposing the baby and she starts recriminating ('why did you do this? why did you say that?') against her friend.

yeah this was great. what she does for her friend could be done -- would be done, by some directors -- as saintly. you don't expect her to come back at her.

This was fantastic.

i totally expected to dislike this, i thought it would be a slice of dardennes style miserablism but it is astonishing. such a different experience to the one i expected when i entered the cinema. the tension is built up incredibly subtly. the scene with the knife had me wriggling in my chair with anxiety.

pretty much the whole film had me wriggling in my chair with anxiety! like you i wasn't expecting much from this.

I think the dinner party scene had me more worried than any other. I was convinced her friend was dead while she was having to just sit there.

n.b. saw this quite by chance, probably would not have bothered if I'd had any idea about the subject matter. A lesson to challenge my preconception more often.

preconceptions rather, since I'm sure I have more than one.

Been watching 'Rosetta' today (never got round to the two Ds before). Obv the characters in both films are in a terrible situation, except '4 weeks..' is a thriller that keeps the tension up throughout. Dardennes is more like Ken Loach? Really drab, little hope - they can script humour to break it up (the scene where the boy tries to get the girl to dance to a taped recording of his band), but they choose not to do much w/ that. Almost wish they had scripted some more of those kinds of things, the doc-like approach ws like taking easy option.

By coincidence also caught an ep of 'Unreported world' last night about backstreet abortions in Nicaragua (there used to be clinically legalized abortion, now not). In one segment the instrument used to extract the fetus from the girl in the film was shown...

i think "Or" by Keren Yedaia resembles "4 months" style a bit more than the D. bros.and all of them,anyway, are the birthchilds of Chantel Akerman.

Akerman isn't v 'realist' to me (I've only seen 'Dielman' and 'La Captive').

Yeah, Akerman seems like a stretch.

http://auteursnotebook.s3.amazonaws.com/multiple%20images/MPOTW/5_Mr_lazarescu_500.jpg

i want to see this. that poster is brilliant.

really doesn't convey the spirit of the film, exactly.

I like Police, Adjective. The 'case' is very intentionally boring.

oh i know, that's why it works.

i wish i hadn't seen police, adjective on the last day of TIFF when i had almost zero patience

Man oh Man @ Death of Mr.Lazurescu and that poster. So want that. That scene where the ambulance lady suddenly denies that the doctors at one of the hospitals deny operation is just mind bending.

Anyone seen his new one Aurora?

pretty sure I'm seeing this after work. has anyone?

http://www.filmforum.org/films/tuesday.html

What film was it? Aurora??

and lol at that Lazarescu poster!! I like it but I kind of feel like it tips away from the perfectly balanced deadpan of the film somewhat...

Anyway, maybe I said it before but I think that film is still maybe my #1 pick of the 00s.

p sure that link was prob to 'tuesday, after christmas'

i bought 'aurora' on dvd but havent had the time to watch

Sicinski on Aurora (spoiler warning):

http://www.fandor.com/blog/the-big-ones-aurora

Cool.

Has anyone seen Beyond the Hills or Tales from the Golden Age? Don't think the latter ever got a theatrical release here right?

i watched tales from the golden age on dvd recently, it's good fun. there are no individual credits for each segment but the two best ones (chicken driver and air thieves) smelt strongly of mungiu to me. chicken driver has a great turn from the guy who played the doctor in 4 months.

Beyond the Hills, new film from Cristian Mungiu is so so so good. Subject matter looks radioactive but it's so forgiving and accepting and bleak
core question seems to be can faith support you in a world where god has left us to our own devices and the answer is up for grabs but you walk away with sympathy for pretty much every character
it's also a christ story but ymmv
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258281/

― the 'dirty sprite' is implied (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, March 13, 2013 6:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

echoing forks, v good movie

http://bombsite.com/issues/122/articles/6923

I really liked Beyond the Hills, moreso than Mungiu's previous 'hit' ... have any critics connected it to The Crucible?

I did think that the one third-act scene that literally came off as a crucifixion was a tad heavyhanded, but not fatal to the film.

ok, now that Ebertmania is over...?

The Crucible: what's the film like?

re: crucifixion, the only bit that might've been heavy handed was the girl watching the gate as the passing car came by with the driver asking about properties that are to be sold around the area. The reminder that this was happeing today was clearly given in the aftermath.

Mungiu interview:

“Would an American viewer and a Romanian viewer take the same things from this film? No. Would a believer and an atheist read it in the same way? No…. Therefore, to be objective or precise with ‘the message’ of the film is just an illusion. And this shouldn’t be the concern of a filmmaker. Films shouldn’t, and can’t, be precise in that respect—they can depict attitudes, characters, situations, but they can’t interpret.”

http://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/as-unclear-as-life-itself/

And the true story:

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/like-trash-on-the-hall-floor/

The new Cristian Mungiu, Graduation, is kinda not good at all, and the first time I've seen a Romanian new wave film where a lot of it seemed like mannerism :(

The Romanian poster for THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU is truly astonishing pic.twitter.com/56WMqt1dQY

— R. Emmet Sweeney (@r_emmet) March 27, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge3zMQyk4zI

So, not new wave, but we don't have a thread dedicated to Romanian cinema in general. I just learned about this monstrosity, a Romanian-Soviet glam musical film for children that starred a bunch of ballet dancers and ice skaters, and mindblowingly got nominated for the Golden Palm in Cannes, and then went on to became a mainstay Christmas film. In Norway of all places. It seems as if it's still shown on NRK3 each year on December 23.

'Rock'n'Roll Wolf' is kinda the best film title ever

so there is a NYC Romanian retro... what to see aside from the widely seen lodestones? Opinions other than FB's welcome.

https://filmforum.org/series/the-romanians-30-years-of-cinema-revolution#now-playing

think i may go to Puiu's first feature tonight

Hey #filmwitter 💐,
over the past two months I've been working on compiling a top 10 list of the decade's best Romanian films. 31 local critics were polled. These are the results:https://t.co/61hfnSxxvw

— Flavia Dima (@dima_flavia) November 19, 2019

What a list! Crazy to me that I Do Not Care If Go Down In History as Barbarians is higher than Scarred Hearts. Four Jude in top ten is kinda crazy in general, but he is very good. Oh, and the lack of Infinite Football is hurtful :(

Aka here's a list of films 99% of Romanians dgaf about.

When I was at a small film festival in Bucharest (sitting on a jury with Cãtãlin Mitulescu) there was a full house to everything. They didn't seem less interested in weird cinema than people do in Copenhagen?

It's not specific to Romania, that's for sure. I'm just irritated at the prevailing logic: 'Romanian TV is good because I understand what they're saying, Romanian film is bad because it's low budget and terminally boring except when one of our own wins a prize in which case I'll celebrate by actively avoiding the fruit of their labour.' Quebec is the same way, incidentally.

Oh, okay. If it's any consolation, at least Romania keeps winning the good awards. Denmark is just nominated for Oscars for shit films.

Heh, fair enough. Fwiw it's a widespread sentiment among STEM/IT types, who have a bone to pick with non-pop culture whenever the topic comes up.

where is the list of films Romanians gaf about, then?

Mitulescu's most popular film is at that FF fest tonight, but i see it's also free on Amaz0n

where is the list of films Romanians gaf about, then?

Recent American blockbusters, with a smattering of Romanian films from a bygone era to periodically rekindle our patriotism.

pic.twitter.com/87KKO4NDYi

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) August 13, 2020

Too bad the premiere was overshadowed by Puiu's bullshit:

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/08/cristi-puiu-goes-on-anti-mask-rant-1234580225/

yeah i couldnt find the link for that

Okay, I know the films I saw this weekend were programmed by the Romanian Cultural Institute to uphold a certain idea of Romanian Cinema. But are ALL films made in Romania as deeply grim as what I just saw? (Man and Dog, Otto the Barbarian, and Miracle.)

Maybe. What did you think of Miracle? Thought of going to see it last week, but didn't make it.

A well-constructed mystery, but if I'd known it was going to be that grim....

Sieranevada is not exactly lighthearted, but I wouldn't call it grim either. It's the last film I saw in a cinema, and it's really a marvel of compression, taking place mostly in one apartment over the course of a few hours. It left me wishing that more filmmakers had the ability to animate stories with such limited means.

Sieranevada is still not available in the US as far as I can see, and it's 6 years after it was released

I hope this won't happen to Memoria but I'm guessing it will

Everybody In Our Family is pretty pitch black comedy but I don't know if I'd call it grim.