How I Celebrated the End of the World

Not too strong on plot, "How I spent the end of the world" is strong on mood and feeling, and it very well compensates. I usually don't go crazy about "mood pieces" but this is definitely more. I caught the film at the up and coming Transylvania Film Festival (Tiff for short) where the film had its national premiere after a decent reception at Cannes only a few weeks earlier. The film is a MUST for any Romanian who has lived through the Ceausescu years as the filmmakers went through great pains to accurately depict the mood of those days from general landscape to the toy trucks, school uniforms and furniture all Romanians possessed and shared during an era of uniform mass-production. The film stands out as the harbinger of something historians will hopefully refer to as "the Romanian New Wave." With films like this, and "Marilena from P7" as well as Porumboiu's "Has it Been, Has it not Been" (another personal take on the shattering Revolution of 1989), Romanian cinema is finally entering the world circuit, and will hopefully stay there for a while.

It's an excellent movie but unfortunately it's hard to understand this movie unless u are Romanian and u lived in Romania during the communist era. I realize there were some scenes that were quite tricky for non-Romanians and the movie was full of symbols that were quite difficult to follow but for Romanian people were full of significance. The music is as well full of significance for people who grew up in the communist time. Maybe non-Romanian people will only see how Romanian during that communist era lived without power, out of running water and out of food but the film is a little bit more than that....maybe after seeing this movie u can get a little understanding about what does it mean to live in a communist country. Maybe the director is young and quite unexperienced but I think it's a really interesting movie to be seen and I definitely recommend it.

Indeed...the best Romanian film in a while. It took me back to those years when I was probably about Lalalilu's age and gave me a small piece of my childhood back, when on the one hand everything was a game, on the other it seemed 'normal' (to me) that a child has to suffer from cold and be ill every winter. I realized the tragedy of that only after the communist regime was gone. But what's more important, you don't have to know anything about those years in order to relate to this films, because IT relates to YOU. An honest film, lovely characters, great story and storytelling, totally unpretentious and charming. Great acting and cinematography, lovely directed. Definitely an A+ film from Romania so...expect more...;)

I have seen this movie recently, and it wasn't bad. I was amused by some of the comments made on this site about the movie, like the one disappointed viewer that said "I'm not a fan of Balkan or gypsy music and especially not a fan of national anthems". From some of the comments you would think this movie was a musical. No, it contains very little music, and it is often obligatory to sing the national anthem at school, especially during communism, so it is not something you like or no, it is something that you do.

I understand that the title may be misleading, that one may expect something else, and especially if you are not Romanian, you may not "feel" the movie very well. One viewer that posted a comment said he was confused about the story line, that there was no plot, but only events and people that didn't make sense. I found the story line quite simple, and I found the so called mystery of it to be necessary. It made everything seem as if it was somebody's experience and not real events. I don't know how others found the camera work, some complained that there were objects in front of the camera that seemed carelessly done. I thought the camera work was like that on purpose. Again, for me, it was as if somebody was observing all this in a certain way, and thus the camera tried to adjust to it, to make it more into an experience rather than a clear cut picture. I expected myself the movie to be more about the actual revolution. However, this movie is not about the Romanian revolution as the events of the story only culminate in the revolution at the very end of the movie. The end of the world rather, contains of months that were spend before the revolution, and I think captures well the hopelessness of everything, and the feelings that something is about to come to an end, to change somehow. Thus, those sad months are the so called end of the world, and the end of the movie is a new start.

Last thing to mention was also that this movie does not offer a global view of Romania or of Bucharest or the Romanian Revolution. The story only centers around one family, and their situation, fears, friends, etc. Thus, restricting the story to such a small scale might make viewing harder especially for non-Romanians. Even for some Romanians it may seem pointless to watch this family for the duration of the movie. However, for others like myself, you may find that the story was nicely told, the characters were well portrayed and that the movie was well done. One can argue that it is not perfect, and that it could have been this and that, but generally I thought it was very nice to see.

I have just seen this movie and I loved it. Maybe for the little boy who plays his role very well, maybe for the strange relationship that Eva has with either guys, but especially for how the director managed to capture the communist era in every aspect of the movie. Romanians may understand this better. The revolution took place almost 17 years ago, a new regime was installed since then and almost everything has changed. But this movie brings back even the smallest detail, from the clothes that students wore, music they listened to, even haircuts they had, to the state of the streets, houses, cars. It's amazing, but I had the strong impression that the movie was made many years ago. I would recommend this movie to all Romanians because, in a small detail, it gives a different perspective about the revolution. But also, non-Romanians should watch it just to see how difficult times we have been through.