Sofia’s review published on Letterboxd:
The fierce self-reliance, the unapologetic brutality, the utterly unpoetic display of life in Communist era Romania instilled in me a feeling of both sheer cold and feverish hate. Can I say it’s a good film? Can I say truth is good? It’s reality, that’s all. The stray dogs at night, the brutish self-sufficiency, quantification of pain. If you cry you do so behind closed doors. And the traces must be erased, for it is a different crime after 4 months— it is murder, according to the authorities. It is not something we speak of again, it happened and it is something that will continue to happen. You can rely on no one here but yourself, this is what propels you into that fierce self reliance, and whoever you decide to trust will expect something in return— after all this is a world of exchange. Can you say he was a horrible man? Well at least it wasn’t ten men trying to rape you. It’s a service for a service, what did you expect.
It isn’t poetry but an unwavering confrontation of reality, unapologetically brutal. But can you even call it brutal? For brutality implies some serenity to compare, a glimpse of peace to counteract the horrors, a kind of pendulum of savagery and serenity, beauty and brutality, excess and emptiness. What is it to call something poetic? To see the meticulous arrangement of beauty where it doesn’t belong, so much so that it disarms you. Perhaps to call something unpoetic is to identify a certain absence of beauty, to see only the brutality. But poetry can be fiercely brutal, and so reality can be also. It is fruitless to define these things, I can simply say that watching this film did not feel like viewing art, but living in a reality much harsher than mine, though not too distanced from it.
Thoughts that jostle in my mind, the things that make me shake with anger— it seems that all issues trace back to patriarchy and bureaucracy. You give them a spoonful of power and they are wholly consumed by it. You try to communicate but they hear only hysteria, the wordless cries of some madwoman. It isn’t your problem. You are ashamed to talk about it but not to do it. You cannot make one who is so fixed in his own ways understand, so why argue.
(I watched this film with my mother, sister @nadiaash and grandmother. Both my mother and her mother lived through Communist era Romania, though she was still young at the time of revolution, sixteen. Her remarks were startling in their flippancy, though she has seen painfully similar things around her. There is nothing artful in the director’s creation— as said before, it is the truth. Yes, a post-Communist era Romania granted freedom of voice, this is what has changed, but the judgments remain. The poison is in the mentality, it seems, not in the environment. But what is it that breeds this mentality? It is a question of knowledge and power, always. I could rattle on about epistemological distortions within both communism and capitalism but there is a time for that. Ultimately, individuals suffer and it stems almost wholly from knowledge, whether it is suppressed, deconstructed, granted in abundance, distorted— it breaks you down eventually. Awareness is what is important.
Thanks @Ben for the film, I would fervently recommend. )