sergnechaev

Andrei Ujica's film is an interesting mish-mash of documentary and archive material. Arranged progressively according to the timeline, we are treated to a very long and protracted story of Ceauseascu's life and role in the history of Romania. The film is done according to the very nice-sounding, but eventually problematic motto of "letting the archives and the evidence speak for itself". This proposition can achieve some moniker of success only among those, such as myself, who come from Romania, and know its history well, having studied it at the university level. But to foreigners or even young Romanians, lacking the context and the historical background, the film fails in documenting anything. An external viewer will not know who most of the people in the film are, what the background is for Ceausescu's reactions (such as his speech in 1968 in support of Czechoslovakia) as so forth. The film is also very long, almost three hours, and I admit that even I, who have a professional interest in the documentary material, had to give up half way through and resume later. Making an analogy, the film represents the difference between archive material and a book of history. The material, outside of its chronological arrangement, is raw, lacking subtitles, names etc. in many cases; a documentary based on the material painstakingly gathered by the director would have been much more interesting for the wider public. Still, the film is worth watching for a specialized audience, and shows never before seen material on a very important epoch and person in Romania's history.

This was easily one of the worst movies I have ever had the misfortune of viewing in the last decade. The trailer billed it as a sort of revenge-Stephen King mixture movie, so in a moment of weakness, I decided I'd give it a chance. I figured it would, in the worst case scenario, be a typical capture-and try to get away from a pshyco- kind of flick, one of many we have seen in the last two decades. Instead, I was treated to a highly implausible interaction of pshyoctic minds, one a fledgling pedophile, the other (the main protagonist) a revenge-bent "honor student" from hell with cunning and cruelty that would make Ghenghis Khan blush. The film starts off somewhat slow and predictable, and we quickly jump into the meat and potatoes of this gorefest, as our 14-year old "heroine" proceeds to psychically and psychologically torture his victim. BUt, wait he gets away from her! No, he's captured again, and the plot line resumes. These cheap vehicles are used to drive a plot full of holes, with zero character development and explanations. Who, what, where, why? None of them merit any answers, in the opinion of the snobbish sycophant of a director. But wait, that doesn't make sense! Also of no consequence. This film epytomizes is what is wrong with movies today: we are told we are supposed to like something, so many people will, because they feel they would be considered dumb if they did not. This film is the product of bad acting, and ideas. Stay away.