Prea târziu

Romanian director Lucian Pintilie's film "Trop Tard" starts in Germany with three young violin players and ends in Romania.We are shown that these talented musicians cannot bathe themselves due to acute water shortage as taps run dry.This is something which normally happens in third world countries but some communist countries of Europe are no exception to this rule.In some of these early scenes, there is a real sense of constant movement,a desire to escape bitter,harsh realities of Romania.This feeling of evasion is very much evident throughout the entire film.In Prea târziu,(Trop Tard/Too late)Lucian Pintilié exposes miserable plight of hapless miners who are at the mercy of corrupt mining officials.Too late is also a story about guilty conscience.It is more of an exposé about corruption than being a detective story involving a public prosecutor who is determined to solve a difficult case of two dead miners.Pintilié tells us that it is too late for some communist societies as things should have been corrected a long time ago.The film send us a message that there is an imminent need to change the ways a communist society functions.

Lucian Pintilie's film is an exploration of the life of the miners disguised as a thriller. The events of the infamous "mineriada" - when in June 1990 miners attacked peaceful protesters in Bucharest and have been thanked by Romanian president Iliescu - are not the main focus of the film but they do provide a background as well as a starting point for the film. Pintilie does not try to excuse the behavior of the miners but he does try to see what makes people behave in such an appalling way. His alter ego in the film is the investigator, a young and inexperienced Dumitru Costa brilliantly portrayed by Razvan Vasilescu who tries to uncover crimes committed in the mine and discovers a myriad of corruption. This allows Pintilie to show the difficult, often dehumanizing life of the miners. The film is full with unforgettable grim images such as the scene of a dead body coming in a conveyor belt. While being critical to the behavior of the miners, Pintilie also shows a remarkable sympathy for those who work in such difficult conditions. But do the victims of the "mineriada" agree? Nonetheless Pintilie makes clear that there is no hope for life and even the idealistic investigator ultimately chooses the way of exile.

I've seen the movie long ago, however, few days ago (and it's late sept 2004) something reminded me of it. Doesn't matter much, local politics... Still, Pintilie went beyond the art-fancy-sophisticated movie maker style he had so well embraced before. In "prea tirziu" he shows a brutal reality, a strange kind of reactions, bad persons, bad relations, bad values (if there is such a thing), bad everything... And he shows it in a good way. Watch it closely, even though you are not accustomed to the Romanian style, observe some people that exist - of course, not that dramatically, but still - and think that this can happen today, somewhere not far from us.

It's not Romania, it's not the real stuff, but it's about some people that exist. Somehow, this drama is a comedy. And I definitely suggest you to watch it. You won't regret it.

It's a well known fact that the 10 years break between "Reconstituirea" and "De ce trag clopotele, Miticä?" was fatal to Lucian Pintilie, making him lose his movie-touch in a terminal way, his last sparks in cinema being noticed in "Balanta" and "O varä de neuitat" - two movies that contained a few good scenes. Unfortunately, the shameful "Prea târziu" is only the beginning of the author's final decline...

While fancying to attempt an in-depth analysis of Romanian society of the '90s, the story only juggles with some opportunist concepts, speculating in a gratuitous and expositive way the painful impact of the so-called "Mineriades". The conclusion is ridiculously hysteric: Romanian people turned into an underground killing beast, hungry for blood, for whose redemption it's "too late"...

The directing is primitively-violent, using cheap naturalist tactics that try to pose as "style". And Pintilie's personal obsession for full frontal male nudes, showing their genitals without the least aesthetic or semantic legitimacy, reaches here nightmarish proportions... We are deeply sorry, but NOT EVERYBODY is fascinated by staring between the legs of naked men, thank you very much!

An incredible piece of trash, with cheeky "artsy" pretensions.

The cardboard myth, the cinematic Potemikiniade, the clay-footed colossus that is Lucian Pintilie shows again his hideous and incompetent face.

He was once upon a time, several decades ago, a talented theater director and a promising movie-maker - but he never had the resources to substantiate his career. He simply has no grasp of what the cinematographic aesthetics MEAN. He believes that filmic art is synonymous with hysteria, brutality, vulgarity - and, oh yes, exhibitionism! If he doesn't command the actors to take all their clothes off and parade their nakedness in front of himself and the camera, he doesn't feel he's alive! This scabrous piece of film about the Romanian miners is one of the most amateurish and trivial he ever made. It's amazing, how certain semidoctes can achieve intellectual orgasms by watching this worthless insult to decent cinema.