The Father Who Moves Mountains

Fatherhood? Sense of duty? Hubris? Selfishness? Stubborness? Stupidity? I despise most of the behaviours/feelings displayed by the main character but I'm not sure this is why I just disliked the movie.

Trying to dig a little deeper: what was the author's intention? It's not an action movie, not a good thriller, not even a decent drama. The director neither praises neither condemns what he shows, as if trying to be objective, yet it's not a documentary at all (even if it is a supposedly "true" story).

10 minutes total of scattered dialogues depict sufficiently all the relevant things the movie can offer: parenthood shortcomings, fears, and sense of guilt; getting old; the corruptive/corrupted nature of people. The rest is time annoyingly wasted: we are mostly offered nearly 2 hours of a desperate idiot with a certain power that other people second out of pity/duty/interest.

And BTW I wonder what kind of winter storms they had in that year to render mountains of 2000-2500m so impossibly dangerous...

After reading a few reviews, seeing how divisive the father (admirably played by Mr. Titieni) is, I believe this movie perfectly underlines the greyness of life. On one hand you have an extremely powerful man going full Ahab in his quest to literally move the mountains (beautiful Romanian aphorism), alienating his family along the way, on the other hand you have the fearless leader capable of inspiring people and turning doubters into believers.

One of the best shot Romanian movies, one of the very few without sound issues, head and shoulders above the artsy fartsy empty works of some of the better known Romanian directors.

The english title is kind of a giveaway - to be fair, I don't think you'd expect any different. The mood is set from the start and the cinematography is quite stunning. Of course for some this may feel a bit long. The pace and things happening are quite slow. But you'll either dig it or just find it annoying.

Acting is decent enough and if you go with the flow, the drama will get to you one way or another. That doesn't mean you have to agree with everything the (main) character(s) are doing. Still there is enough suspense to keep you invested until the very end - even if it may be a bit too long ...

I'm not sure whether the reviews on this page are written by frustrated Romanians or if they're written by foreigners. Either way, it's hard to understand the abysmal ratings, this was a very well-made movie inspired by true events (if you live in Romania you should know about it, it was quite a while ago), great acting (Adrian Titieni is a wonderful actor who's been in numerous great movies), and awesome cinematography. It's one of the few Romanian films that feel like they were produced somewhere else. How can you be annoyed at the ending, when it's a real-life ending, I just don't get it. But hey I guess Marvel movies are more entertaining, you don't have to really use your brain at all. Stick to those movies next time instead of trying to ruin this movie with unwarranted bad reviews.

I wonder how it comes that the official intelligence service is involved in a private matter. It's a little embarrassment of Romanian democracy with the implication to corruption, isn't it?