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 the death of mr lazarescu
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Shoved from pillar to post. Cristi Puiu must be some kind of miracle worker. The 49-year-old director has somehow managed to turn a two-and-a-half hour Romanian film about a pensioner being shunted from hospital to hospital in his dying hours into one of the most visceral and entertaining films of the year. Told almost entirely in painstaking real time, what’s scary for British viewers is that the bureaucracy and cold nature of the Romanian hospital system isn’t too far from the horror stories relayed about the NHS. Inspired by Eric Rohmer’s Moral Tales series from the 90s, this is the first of six films that Puiu plans to make about love, set in the suburbs of Bucharest. He says, “Mr Lazarescu is about love for your fellow man. The next one will be about adultery. There will be six stories about love or, more precisely, the lack of love.” Schooled as a painter in Switzerland, the Romanian director has something of an art-school approach to filmmaking - every image is part of his manifesto. Even the film’s title, a reference to the biblical tale of Lazarus, is a challenge to the conventional approach to filmmaking. He says, “When usually you speak of film and drama, you are talking about a development of a story in order to get to a point; the relationship the film has with the audience is based on what will happen next. I really wanted to move the accent away from what happens next to what is happening now, because I see cinema as a sort of technical science.”  And on the evidence of the marvellous and gripping Death Of Mr Lazarescu it’s a crying shame that Puiu isn’t still in school, teaching his methods to the majority of directors working in Hollywood.
Kaleem Aftab
The Death Of Mr Lazarescu, on selected release 14 July 06.
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Read members' comments related to this film.
comment by syracusa
Jan 26, 2007
I am a Romanian currently living in the US. My sister saw the movie (I did not) but from what she told me, I don't think I would be physically able to watch it. I am sure it is a great work of art but I know it would mess me up so badly I would be a wreck for days.Romanians are not cold people on an individual, personal basis and yet, when they have to function in an institutionalized setting or a "system" - they are capable of producing incredible human disasters. Combine this with the dehumanized "modern" attitudes and values assaulting this country at the moment - and you have the apocalypse in front of your eyes. One day I will find the courage to watch the movie - but not yet. I am sure it is horribly, painfully good.
comment by flyingtwinkle
Jul 15, 2006
A man dying alone , still clinging desparately to life, an insight to the modern way of dying
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