Rolling Romanian New Wave Thread

the main actress was amazing -- but yeah, i guess no eddie murphy in 'norbit' if we're bieng honest.

does norbit have a harrowing abortion scene?

is this the token foreign film of 2008?

For avg Americans who have a quota of one per year, could be

It’s momentously drab, obvious and guilt-inducing. Director Cristian Mungiu’s big revelation is that abortion—like life under Ceausescu—is no fun. But neither is this film: another mystifyingly over-praised entry in what’s being sold as the Romanian New Wave.

- it's deceptively drab. initially i was like 'big deal', but the effect is cumulative, and there's nothing drab about what happens. i guess you could say it's 'obvious': it's a simple story. i have no idea if your boy armond worked for the ceaucesceau regime, but i did not find it guilt-inducing. pity-inducing maybe?
- pic is not really 'making a point'.

as if praising movies from a formerly repressed country apologized for the United State’s failure to intervene

- awesome grasp of cold war politics there!
- if he wants to go toe-to-toe on the history of art-house cinema, deal me in.
- i can like this *and* 'superbad' so f u armond

The Romanians pretend cultural impoverishment necessitated that they reinvent the wheel, and this impresses gullible critics who apparently never saw Rossellini’s Open City or John Cassavetes’ Shadows. But the Roumanians’ tedious long-takes, dour emphasis on “real time,” Dogma-derived denial of refined lighting and visual pleasure are deplorable scams.

- what?
- i have seen those films. they are not like this film.
- this film is in a tradition (akerman, haneke) this guy is ignoring
- one take in this film, of a dinner party, is one the most gut-wrenchingly suspenseful i've seen since... 'cloverfield'

Mungiu stages real-time scenes—hence 4,3,2’s quotidian title

- s'true folks. film is four weeks long. actually, it's not in real time. like 'superbad', it covers a day or so. most films do real-time scenes.

Their efforts are less suspenseful than tedious, but it pushes all the Left buttons.

- like what? abortion should be safe and legal? i don't mind being called leftist. also: NOT TEDIOUS.

Mungiu’s theme: THERE WILL BE ABORTION!

- money-shot. AW wipes down monitor. the preceding stuff about how coercion is not the same is violation is an argument with someone else. nice muff-detection tho.

These girls misuse their late-20th century feminist privilege by being biologically irresponsible and socially manipulative.

- stopped reading here. cunt.

saw the middling 12:08 East of Bucharest a few days ago.

AW seems to be on a trajectory where he'll literally say anything to make a name for himself. i'm not going to spoiler the film, but there are so many reasons why he's wrong -- details that contradict him, but also something bigger, especially with the most horrible thing that takes place in the film.

in this main scene, it's real-time because the girls have to think fast, make decisions... make the wrong one, under the pressure of time. anyhoo he comes across as a complete dick, and indifferent both to what the girls go through in the film, to the plight of women in countries where abortion is illegal, and to people living under shitty dictatorships.

I thought this was going to be about that ridiculous ITN "news" "report" on Romanian beggar children earning £100k a year "like something out of Dicken's London but this IS SLOUGH in 2008" that was on last night and led me to have to lie down in a dark room for some time.

These girls misuse their late-20th century feminist privilege by being biologically irresponsible and socially manipulative.

now i really have to see this, because i suspect anyone who'd say that is a complete piece of shit, and i need to know for sure.

4/3/2 was harrowing and great, armond white still a clueless dick, all is right with the world

So what's Romanian old wave? :-) Romanians will probably be all forgotten about in a year or so, how hateful is this cycle of just going round countries and releasing films from those countries in batches -- one year its Argentina, then Iran, etc. has anyone written about this at all (I don't read much film journalism)? Maybe its just a wrong impression on my part.

Really fantastic piece of erm guerrilla film-making. Good call on Akermann/Haneke. Maybe the best foreign new release I've seen in the cinema since 'Hidden'.

how hateful is this cycle of just going round countries and releasing films from those countries in batches -- one year its Argentina, then Iran, etc. has anyone written about this at all (I don't read much film journalism)?

i agree. but... welcome to 1923! (i'm kind of writing my phd thesis on how this took off, with the german new wave of way back then.) it doesn't get much explored in film journalism because it would be breaking the fourth wall a bit. the whole process of tastemaking -- via festival selection committees, hacks, and flacks -- would be a fine subject. but these spikes do throw up good films sometimes, and it would be physically impossible for anyone actually to have a synoptic grasp of everything that was happening in filmmaking at any time.

most of these films -- also the thai new wave, mexican new wave, brazilian new wave, all of which consist of like 5-7 films that get any kind of distribution -- are made for export anyway.

and ever since lubitsch hollywood has picked up what seems hot. (the german new wave stands out in that its films were properly commercially successful in the US and elsewhere -- ie not like french poetic realism, italian neo-realism, etc.)

according to a article i read, a few romanian films got into west european film festivals in the 60s, but yeah i would bet that no-one in the west knows very much about the history of romanian cinema.

a.o. scott briefly goes into romanian film history in an article on mungiu/puiu/etc in nyt mag two weeks ago (inc. an animated romanian short which won a prize at cannes in the 50s or somesuch)

yeah there have been features about it since this and 'lazarescu' -- practically, though, without travelling to romania (or maybe moscow!?) i dunno how much it would be *possible* to know -- can't think that many romanian films are kept in archives in the west. that isn't a criticism or anything; it's an almost inevitable limitation.

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days -Cristian Mungiu - winner of Cannes 07'

"this film is in a tradition (akerman, haneke)"

akerman - for sure, but haneke- ?!
also Dardenne brothers i'd say.(Rosetta esp.)

anyway, the Dardenne's,Mungio,Keren Yedaia ("Or"), mr.lazarescu - the last years are the best realism period since the italian's neo-realism.

this thread is superior.

there's plenty haneke in the use of offscreen space. and yeah a lot of dardennes though better than that -- none of their mysticism.

realism is bullshit, a uesles term, and i don't think neo-realism was doing anything like what this film was doing.

i didnt compare the neo-realism with the current movement, just the high period.
relism might be bullshit, but comparing this film to american films (like the critic who hated it did, and even by "regular" viewers) is bullshit too . people are so used to the casual shit the system is making them eat, they have to neither compare a really good piece of cinema to them, or categorized it into some sort of "this is an art movie" as oppose to "an entertainer movie" .(i'm doing it sometimes myself but fuck it - in a perfect world the gretness of 4 months will be the majority of what is screening in theatres, not the minority

i think you can compare it to whatever you want to compare it to -- don't think the notion that regular cinemagoers are shit-eaters is at all helpful; in fact, i think it's retarded. art-house movies (defined by where they're shown/to whom they're shown rather than by any aesthetic unity) have always been held up as the 'realistic' counterpoint to fantasy-driven hollywood cinema. i don't think it tells you anything about this film to call it 'realistic', especially since, like haneke, so much of it is about what is and what isn't shown.

in a perfect world there wouldn't be dictatorships to make films about... or sea-monsters.

ok,i was exaggerating.
i agree thers no need to title the films as "realism" or "fantasy" or whatever,cause of course it has more complexity than that, but the point is, people have to use those terms in order do define in their minds which movie (or anything else for that matter) they are about to see.it's easier to understand or to explain, but of course it's not "correct",as much as language in general will never be correct, and always be superficial.

and about the perfect world - what i meant by perfect cinematic world is the 60's i guess, where bergman and fellini movies was screend not only in art-house theatres,or at least that what i've heard.

lol but bergman and fellini suck. they did get wider distrib than most 'art-house' films tho.

i saw 'lazarescu' -- definitely the second-best romanian film i've seen. lot of similarities to '4/3/2', though: limited timescale, long takes, theme of romania being really shitty.

thing about '4/3/2' -- does she keep the knife? what does she do with the abortionist's ID?

"most of these films -- also the thai new wave, mexican new wave, brazilian new wave, all of which consist of like 5-7 films that get any kind of distribution -- are made for export anyway."

Haven't most of these people studied film in Europe/US, or have had their aesthetic shaped by Euro arty cinema?

I like to see American films in arthouse cinemas and '4/3/2' down my local cinema.

I like some Bergman and some Fellini, but I do dislike some of their supporters, maybe I'm still recovering from seeing that film about Berg on BBC4. 'sacred arthouse director is shit' thing is as tiresome as 'Hollywood is crap' tho'. I'd rather go film by film.

Its not so much 'realism'. '4/3/2' looks good, but also looked cheap and fast to make, maybe that's what would link something like this to 'Bicycle Thieves', and maybe to most of the films I love.

Haven't most of these people studied film in Europe/US, or have had their aesthetic shaped by Euro arty cinema?

definitely true of ang lee, cuaron, maybe the 'city of god' guy too, and others. i don't think many national cinemas have evolved as-it-were independently of the world market (maybe in pre-war japan or china?) but 'city of god' typifies modern 'world' cinema in a lot of ways: there was a street-kid wrangler who knew (a bit) about the world the film was about, and then a hotshot ad director who came in to shoot the thing.

*SPOILERS*

thing about '4/3/2' -- does she keep the knife? what does she do with the abortionist's ID?

See that's what I liked about it, it's constantly setting up these red herrings that you think are going to come back into the plot, but they don't. You end up feeling jumpy and nervous, same as the characters have to permanently feel living in 1989 Romania - it's a nice little trick by the director I think, he puts you into the same mindspace as the people you're watching by making it seem like you're watching a thriller.

Don't know if I explained that very well.

yeah i agree. you get a comparable thing in 'lazarescu' -- the camera stays with other patients in the hospital just longer than you'd expect, just enough to open it up on to other stories. other people are maybe going through similar kinds of experience that night -- it's a bit like the stuff with the two jewish guys in 'harold and kumar'.

4.3.2 is even better than the outstanding and brilliant "lazarescu" - it takes the formula, and adds to it some smart cinematic nuances,making it a bit more complex:the soundtrack on that scene when she throws the foetus to the garbage, the family scene of course (the inner drama vs. the outside drama), the quick camera movement towards bebe's face when he is shouting on the 2 girls,the scene where bebe is confronting his mother and she stays in the car,listeing and watching...

"the camera stays with other patients in the hospital " - there were others?!
i liked the symbolic fact that lazarescu is usually placed at the back of the frame while the hospital staff is more at the front of the camera

i was less sure of what the director of 'lazarescu' was getting at; obviously it wasn't 'just' a critique of the romanian healthcare system. you could compare it with kafka or bunuel but people aren't uniform in their responses, some are more helpful than others, etc., and it allowed that the doctors had their reasons for keeping him out sometimes.

i think it's a very dark comedy about alienation and death.
lazarescu is dead even before he is actually dead (the movie title), and in the final shoot, he finalyy gets his special "royal treatment",before he will actually die.
he isnt a saint,not a sinner, he is a simple human being - lonely,but trying,weakly, to keep his self respect.that resembles Kafka.

i remember that great scene where lazarescu is suppose to get his attention from the nurses but than the doctor comes into the room shouting:"does someone have a nokia charger for my cell phone"?
brilliant.

Spoilers.

It never struck me while watching it, mostly because I was gripped and miserable, but this is defnitely of a kin with Haneke. There's the long-takes and the drab lighting ("71 Fragments…"; "7th Kontinent") and the take on negotiations and enforcement of power between individuals ("Funny Games"; "Time of the Wolf").

The reversal of the main character's relationship with her boyfriend is well turned: he's initially needy and guilt-tripping, juvenile and she plays to it, panders; but, in his room after the dinner-party scene, she seems suddenly of a more adult world where this shit's intolerable. Plus she's concerned about her friend obv.

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. Seemed a much more fucked up take on, yes. we can try make sense of it, we can... but sometimes stuff happens for reasons that we're unwilling to commit ourselves to fully understanding for fear of what that would mean… and sometimes, in fact, we just don't get to understand but instead can only grasp around it.

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.