12:08 East of Bucharest

Romanian movie I got from Netflix a few days after reading a write-up about Romanian cinema in New York Times Magazine... Gosh the internet age is great!

I watched this twice, and liked it even more the second time. It's deceptively tight: that is, the first time through, a lot of stuff that felt loose and kind of random turned out to all be pretty obviously deliberate and productive (plotwise) while watching it the second time. Which impressed me a lot, for whatever reason. Especially when the station owner guy is looking for his Mythology Dictionary, which I'd completely forgot about by the time it got to the show and he started quoting Heraclitus and discussing Plato's cave the first time I watched it.

I especially liked the way the really long take following the car around the town seemed to go on just way too long, so eventually you start wondering why it's going on so long, and then, cut, we're at the beginning of the show. Very nice touch.

The ending also elevated the movie beyond just being the really enjoyable and likeable little comedy it was: when the voice from behind the camera starts talking (I really couldn't figure out if the voice was supposed to be one of the characters in the film or if it was the director), counting down while we watch a streetlight, getting impatient, then counting down again, and it turns on, and the voice says "It's calm and beautiful. Just like my memory of the revolution. It was calm and beautiful." And more silent shots of the streetlights turning on. One of the most perfect endings for a movie that I can think of, even as I wonder exactly what such a claim might mean to people who lived through that revolution (it's my understanding that Romania's revolution and overthrow of Ceausescu was especially violent as far as Eastern Bloc revolutions went, ending with the public execution of Ceausescu and his wife (I'm not checking my facts here, but I don't think I'm far off), so saying it was "calm and beautiful" seems like it might be kind of bold and maybe even a bit antagonistic? My sense is that, I guess cuz I'm always looking for this kind of thing, just as the whole movie was set in this small out of the way town, this description of the revolution as being "calm and beautiful" is meant to describe the actual environment around the speaker at the time of the revolution, emphasizing that this immediate environment around him--the calm and the snow and the beauty--was more real to him than the violent events going on in Bucharest.)

Also, I really thought, at first, the women at the beginning were maids, since they were all so industriously setting about the housework while the men lazily wandered around their apartments waking up. I have no idea, knowing little about actual Romanian culture, if this was intentionally exaggerated for comedic effect or if this was meant to just be a matter-of-fact portrayal of the way most husband and wife households work.