THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU
***** out of *****
Reviewed by David Cormack

Screening in the 2006 New Zealand International Film Festival
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Genres
Comedy
Drama

2005
Directed by
Cristi Puiu
Written by
Cristi Puiu
Razvan Radulescu
Cast
Ion Fiscuteanu .... Mr. Lazarescu
Luminita Gheorghiu .... Mioara Avram
Gabriel Spahiu .... Leo
Doru Ana .... Sandu Sterian
Dana Dogaru .... Miki Sterian
Florin Zamfirescu .... Dr. Ardelean
Clara Voda .... Dr. Gina Filip
Adrian Titieni .... Dr. Dragos Popescu
Mihai Bratila .... Dr. Breslasu
Mimi Branescu .... Dr. Mirica
Rodica Lazar .... Dr. Serban
Alina Berzunteanu .... Dr. Zamfir
Mirela Cioaba .... Marioara

My kingdom for a breath mint

An old man sits in his dilapidated apartment feeding his cats and feeling very sick.

A bus crashes into a truck killing at least 11 tourists.

A paramedic is told to shut up when she demands that her charge be operated on – as per instructions.

Doesn’t sound like a riotous barrel of laughs does it? But, Romania’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Moartea domnului Lazarescu) is a very funny movie.
Not funny like the belly laughs you’d get watching a Peter Sellers movie, but there are genuine laugh-out-loud scenes as well as an underlying sense of comic mirth throughout the entire journey.

The film opens with Mr Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu, in one of the more phenomenal acting performances - more on this later) home alone with his cats on a Saturday night. He feels a bit ill, has a terrible headache and has been throwing up for the whole day. He calls for an ambulance and is told to sit tight and wait and one will be with him shortly.

Only one isn’t with him shortly at all, he calls again and again and still the ambulance doesn’t come. So he visits his next-door neighbours who give him medication and sit with him. But this façade of caring is undone when, Mr Lazarescu throws up blood and his neighbours sit there chatting about the state of the burnt Jelly they’d been cooking. Despite what it may sound like, the whole situation reeks of absurdist comedy and I found myself laughing in spite of the melancholy.
And so it goes on. A paramedic - Mioara Avram (Luminita Gheorghiu) - finally arrives but she doesn’t seem to care either. Only when she realises that he may have colon cancer does she act in a way one would expect a medical professional to.

The lack of compassion displayed towards Mr Lazarescu until this point is due to his tendency to drink. He drinks “Matropolis”, a hybrid drink of the working class that is high in toxicity but low in status. Both his neighbours and the paramedic initially assume he is drunk and this is a trend that is to repeat itself over and over in some vicious sisyphustinian cycle:

Doctor or nurse leans over the patient, takes a whiff of his breath then immediately concludes he is drunk and does not need the urgent attention that the audience know he does. If only he’d brushed his teeth before he left his apartment huh?

The whole film is based around Mioara’s attempts to get Mr Lazarescu the proper help he needs and as he is tossed out of one hospital and told to move on to the next, Mr Lazarescu’s health deteriorates before our very eyes, his speech becomes slurred, he loses control over his bladder and bowel, and he can’t walk anymore.

Some of the tantrums thrown by the doctors in this film are truly remarkable, there’s one who kicks Mr Lazarescu out calling him a drunk and a pig and a waste of time. Another will not operate on him because he won’t sign the consent form, this despite the fact that he has no idea what’s going on around him; and yet another berates and abuses him for wetting himself whilst awaiting a CT scan.

Admittedly this sounds like a tragic, sad awful film but the semi-farcical nature of it never allows it to fall into the trap of something like The Notebook, which is just a lame attempt to make the audience cry.

There are some criticisms of the film – to begin with, outside of the lead, no one puts in a particularly good acting performance. There just doesn’t seem to be any care or emotion put in.  But the biggest criticism is levelled not at the actors, the director or any of those who directly worked on the film but at the person who wrote the translation for the subtitles. Quite often the subtitles aren’t correct and in some instances not even attempted with the odd conversation peppered by written Romanian words. Whilst the overall gist of the conversations is clear it can become a little annoying when it’s apparent the translator got lazy and just left a word out.

I spoke earlier of the acting performance of Ion Fiscuteanu. Whilst he is not a household name I don’t think you could expect to see a better acting performance from anyone in the last 5 years’ worth of filmmaking. The range of emotions he invokes from us is startling, we hate him, we like him, we sympathise with him, we cheer him. We cover the whole spectrum and we truly believe that this is a sick old man who becomes deathly ill over the course of the 2 ½ hours of the film.

What? 2 ½ hours you say? That’s a long film. Yes it is, and you’d think with this subject matter that it would be hellishly boring. But, much to my surprise, it’s not! I’m the sort of guy who starts to get antsy about 2 hours through a movie but at no stage did my attention start to wander, even at its meandering pace this film had me hooked from its start to the nicely done finish.

Which I might add is wonderfully ambiguous.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough. Whilst it may sound like a crap movie that would hold no interest to you whatsoever it’s the most wonderfully surprising film I’ve seen in a long time. Besides, just explaining the plot sometimes fails to capture how great a film is. Try and explain The Usual Suspects storyline and make it sound great.

This film will screen in Wellington on August 2nd at 8:00pm and August the 3rd at 1:00pm at the Embassy Theatre. Refer to the Film Fest homepage for more information.

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