The Reenactment

Reconstituirea; satire, Romania, 1968; D: Lucian Pintilie, S: George Mihaita, Vladimir Gaitan, George Constatin, Emil Botta, Ernest Maftei, Ileana Popovici

A desolate café in a village, near a river. A van arrives with several people inside who settle there: the Prosecutor orders two student friends, Vuica and Ripu, to re-enact their fight when they were drunk at the same location, where they accidentally hit the waiter on the head and broke a small kiosk. The cameraman will record them to make an educational film about the dangers of alcoholism among the youth. A Sergeant also suprvises the filming and takes away the students' IDs until they finish. Problems constantly disrupt their process. The Prosecutor admits they will not go to prison, regardless of the outcome, but still insists they continue. Finally, when pressed to act more realistically, Ripu hits Vuica in the head for real, who falls down a hill. Stumbling and seeing all the people who return from a football match, Vuica falls on the mud in the ground and dies.

Included in a local film critics' poll as one of the best movies of Romania's cinema of the 20th century, satirical "The Reenactment" (also known as "The Reconstruction") is not only a metafilm experience, but also a meta-political and meta-sociological one. Based on allegedly true events, the director Lucian Pintilie pushes everything in the story to an as absurd level as possible, up until the bitter and dark ending. Already in the first scene (a film clapperboard is seen on screen, signaling the start of filming of a scene in the movie where protagonist Vuica falls in the mud and stands up, which is repeated six times), Pintilie alludes to the artificiality of these events and his intent to distil real-life messages from the illusion of art, and he keeps the viewers in anticipation—in the first 20 minutes, random weird scenes are presented (a waiter with a scar on his bald head lies on the table while a Sergeant watching him warns to watch out for the sun; a girl in a bikini swims in the river; a grandma pets a goose on her lap; a van with men arrives, but its car horn is stuck) almost as some sort of comical-surreal S. Leone-style opening, and the viewers are not quite sure what is happening. Only later do these align into a story of a Prosecutor forcing two students to re-enact their fight for an educational film about alcoholism.

Filmed on only one location (the exteriors of a café in a village), "The Reenactment" is an exercise in trying to craft a film out of the minimum, but Pintilie uses unusal camera angles, close ups, stylish shot compositions and other means to keep it interesting throughout. And comical moments constantly keep happening: an ambulance van rushes through the street and scares away geese from the grandma's farm, so the Prosecutor orders the two students to search for said geese in the forest and return them. The Sergeant and student Vuica have this exchange: "What will your father say when he finds out his son has been in jail?" - "Who says I have a father? He died two years ago in an accident. A tank came over him and he died. There was more dust than flesh in his coffin." The bikini girl asks Ripu to give her his bracelet from his arm; he obliges, she says it's "beautiful"—and then she throws said bracelet in the river, saying to the confused lad: "You are more beautiful like this." The wounded Vuica walks confusingly across a whole row of people who mock him because they think he is drunk, and one man even jokes: "Did you get drunk without soda? Or was the soda too strong for you?" Certain omissions reduce the movie's quality, though, including that such a restricted setting inhibits a greater development of the storyline and characters, and that it all becomes a bit stale in the last third. Nonetheless, the movie's subversive and biting allegorical sharpness was so strong that the Communist regime of Romania banned it and placed it into the bunker, since its universal theme gains an outline in the finale—the government targets a minor problem, decides to solve it, but in the end makes it even worse due to its rigid incompetence.

Grade:+++

Time of Violence

Vreme na nasilie; historical drama, Bulgaria, 1988; D: Ludmil Staikov, S: Yosif Sarchadzhiev, Ivan Krastev, Valter Toski, Rusi Chanev, Anya Pencheva, Vasil Mihaylov, Momchil Karamitev, Kalina Stefanova

Bulgaria during the Ottoman occupation, 1668. A Janissary regiment led by Kara Ibrahim, himself a Bulgarian kidnapped as a child and converted to Islam, is sent to the village of Elindenya, Rhodope valley, with the order by the Sultan to forcefully convert all Christians there into Muslims. The villagers, among them shepherd Manol, are summoned to the headquarters and given 10 days to decide to convert. The wedding between Manol and Sevda is interrupted when Ibrahim's soldiers show up, arrest everyone and send them to a prison for the last three days of their ultimatum. The women are raped, while those men who refuse to become Muslims are murdered publicly. When Ibrahim threatens to kill Manol's son, Manol feigns he will put the turban on his head, but then starts a fight with the soldiers and is killed. A boy brings the head of one of the last rebels hiding in the caves, Momchil, to the headquarters. When Ibrahim crouches to look at the head, the boy stabs him with a knife.

Voted in one local poll as the best Bulgarian movie of the 20th century, allegedly based on real events from the 17th century, 4-hour monumental historical film "Time of Violence" by director Ludmil Staikov is an excellent historical depiction of forced conversions of Bulgarian Christians to Islam during the reign of the Ottoman Empire, with a remarkable sense for reconstruction of the mentality and way of life of the people of that time, to such an extent that their actions and behaviors seem easily recognizable even today. Through this story several universal themes are observed, whether political ones—colonialism, imperialism, collaborationism, forced assimilation, resistance of suppressed nations to survive—whether personal, humanistic ones—some individuals show integrity and honor, refusing to convert to Islam, while others give up faced with coercion in order to save their skin (Sevda converts to Islam to save Manol, but is killed by the soldiers when she insults Ibrahim; an orthodox Christian priest leads the villagers from the cave to convert to Islam). The leading antagonist is Kara Ibrahim (played by the impressive Yosif Sarchadzhiev) who is the embodiment of (religious) fundamentalism, showing how extremism slowly destroys everything in its way, starting with moderate people. This is illustrated in the disturbing sequence where Ibrahim and his regiment arrive to a town, guided by the moderate Ottoman governor Suleyman Aga, and spot a man on a roof of a building. Ibrahim has this exchange with Aga: "Who is he?" - "A carpenter. A foreigner." - "Religious or non-religious?" - "Non-religious." - "Sell him to me." Ibrahim gives Aga a small bag of money, then takes a gun and shoots the man on the roof. Aga then asks: "Why did you kill him?" - "So that everyone in the headquarters know that I have arrived".

Upon hearing that Ottoman soldiers have arrived, the villagers quickly send all their kids away so that they won't be abducted to become Jannisary, and dig a hole in the ground to place a huge vase there, and grain inside the vase, covering it with grass, to hide their food. The dialogues are surprisingly engaging and sharp. For instance, there is a sly comment about the Ottoman Sultan: "A desperate man with power, my friend, is the worst of all evils." When the Christian villagers are "bullied" into finally becoming Muslims, one villager teases Ibrahim: "I can't, Aga." - "What if others change their religion?" - "I'll see then, Aga. Let me be the last one." - "Isn't it all the same, Giaur?" - "It isn't, Aga. If I'm the last one, no one will be left to curse me after it." Despite this, nothing is presented as black and white: the moderate Ottoman governor is opposed to these forced conversions: "A green water melon, forcibly riped, isn't sweet!"; whereas Ibrahim, ironically, is himself a Bulgarian Christian who was abducted by the Ottomans and converted to Islam, meaning that he is now the continuation of his own injustice that wrecked his life, as he has intermittent flashbacks of his mother running after him. Even more ironic, a man who tries to assassinate Ibrahim in his room, turns out to be Goran, his own long lost brother, hinting at the cyclic nature of self-destruction. The director Staikov crafts several aesthetic images thanks to the fantastic locations in Rhodope mountains: one is the wonderful panorama shot of three flocks of sheep running across a yellow meadow on a hill, the other are the amazing frames of hundreds of people fleeing inside giant caves. Dark and bleak, but also contemplative, philosophical, "Time of Violence" still feels fresh today, has a remarkably fluent story flow from start to finish, and a sense for universality of cinema.

Grade:+++

May December

May December; drama, USA, 2023; D: Todd Haynes, S: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton, Cory Michael Smith, Elizabeth Yu

Actress Elizabeth visits an unusual wife whom she is about to play in a movie: Gracie, who had sex with her husband Joe when he was 13 years old, and she was 36. Gracie gave birth to their child in prison, but upon release she married Joe, and now they have three kids: Honor, Charlie and Mary. Elizabeth befriends Gracie and Joe, stays at their house, and studies their behavior. Joe has sex with Elizabeth, but regrets it. Charlie and Mary graduate, while Gracie tells Elizabeth to beat it. Elizabeth later films the movie on set.

What would happen to a grown woman who had sex with a 13-year old boy 20 years later? Todd Haynes' "May December" is a movie that tells this story after the paparazzi sensationalism, depicting it in a restrained, clinical and cold manner, showing this couple (Gracie, Joe) now married, with kids, as they are visited by an actress, Elizabeth, who studies Gracie to play her in a movie. The sole story is "spicy", but the movie isn't very cinematic. It's all rather stale after one gets used to the opening concept, since the storyline doesn't know what to do with this in the end. Natalie Portman as Elizabeth and Julianne Moore as Gracie are again excellent. The direction is competent, yet it needed more creativity and a better plot that would offer a higher amplitude of events than the rather routine one we got.

Grade:++

My Dear Theo

Z lyubov'yu z frontu; documentary, Ukraine / Poland / Denmark, 2025; D: Alisa Kovalenko, S: Alisa Kovalenko

On 24 February 2022, Goreshist Russia invades Ukraine, contaminating the land with occupation. Kyiv film director Alisa Kovalenko decides to follow her own promise in case of such invasion and joins the Ukrainian Army to defend her country, and takes her camera and microphone to also intermittently film the war front. Her unit battles Russian invaders in the Kyiv and Kharkiv Oblasts. During that time, Alisa writes letters to her 4-year old son Theo, confessing she misses him and doesn't know if she will survive the combat.

Excellent "unplanned" documentary "My Dear Theo" is assembled out of random episodes from the director Alisa Kovalenko's secret recordings from the front in the Russo-Ukrainian War, but almost every one of her frames are stylized, aligned and directed with such a concise guidance that it all can be analysed from any sequence on its own, showing the director's sense for cinema, even though she was surprised to stand in front of the camera instead of behind the camera. Whether these scenes are terrifying (random "flashes" of explosions on the countryside of a village seen over the horizon from afar), tragic (cows too afraid to get back in the barn from too loud explosions in the background as a farmwoman is trying to guide them back) or poetic (ants walking over the trenches), they all illustrate a broader picture of the historic event, and give enough context despite their disconnected nature. Kovalenko also inserted her own narration of her letters to her 4-year old son from the title, which gives the movie a metafilm touch. Despite all of the madness and death of the war, and the eerie feeling of uncertainty since the enemy is always outside the frame, only its crimes and violence visible, the movie is even able to find moments of optimism and humor (Kovalenko filming rabbits on a farm for her son via the mobile phone, joking that "battlefront rabbits are greeting" him; a soldier lamenting: "It's the 21st century, and we are digging trenches for the war instead of going to Mars!"). A fascinating film, a chronicle of a destroyed 21st century by politicians with neo-atavism, a contemplation on courage, honor, humanity and integrity during dark times, and valuable archive for future generations.

Grade:+++

Chainsaw Man

Chainsaw Man; animated horror series, Japan, 2022; D: Ryu Nakayama, S: Kikunosuke Toya, Fairouz Ai, Shogo Sakata, Tomori Kusunoki, Taku Yashiro

Teenager Denji is stuck paying off the debt of his late father by killing Devils, demons that sometimes appear in the city. Denji's demon pet dog Pochita has a chainsaw on its snout. When the Yakuza decide to switch sides and join the Devils to gain more power, their zombies attack and kill Denji in a warehouse. However, Pochita transfers his powers to Denji and merges with him, reviving him and giving him the ability to transform into Chainsaw Man. Denji is recruited by Makima and assigned to a special Division, which includes Power, Aki and Himeno, in order to fight the Devils. After an assassination attempt in which several agents are killed (including Himeno), Denji, Aki and Power manage to find the perpetrator and punish him.

The plot concepts of some anime TV series sometimes sound like April's Fools' Day. Sometimes the viewers just need to think of a preposterous idea, google it, and realize that it was already made into an anime. Did you ever wonder how it would look like if a teenager had the ability to transform into a superhero with two chainsaws on his hands and another one on his head? It can be tracked down in "Chainsaw Man", a bizarre blend between "Evil Dead II" and "RoboCop", reaching cult status. The title protagonist, teenager Denji, is cynically introduced in the opening of the first episode—as he is walking down the road, wearing an eyepatch, he narrates: "Then there's the kidney I sold, that was 1.2 million. My right eye was 300,000. Sold one of my balls... How much was that again? I think not even 100,000. And I still owe about 38,040,000 yen." He sleeps in a shed in the forest, having only his demon dog Pochita for company. This already establishes his unappealing situation he found himself in due to his father's debt, as a motive for him to yearn for a change of this status quo and get out of this misery as soon as possible. And he does, in a very bloody, gory, brutal way, after he is attacked by zombies, but saved by Pochita who gives him demonic superpowers—as is the case in most superhero stories, where the protagonist starts out at the bottom but then slowly climbs up to the top. Denji is assigned to a special division of Devil Hunters and given a partner, Aki. There's a lot of black humor and sly jokes in these opening few episodes. 

For instance, in episode 2, as they walk on the street, Denji randomly asks if their boss, Makima, has a boyfriend, so Aki just tells him to come with him, behind a back alley—where Aki kicks him and orders him to quit his job, ostensibly because it's too dangerous for him, since he is only after Makima's affection anyway. In a symbolic, lingering moment, Aki throws his cigarette at Denji's shirt, and extinguishes it by spitting on it (and Denji), with barely hidden contempt. To prove him he is not so weak, Denji then stands up and kicks him in the crutch. Later, upon returning back to Makima's office, Denji is holding a wounded Aki and says to her: "The guy's testicles were attacked by the Nut Devil, ma'am!" In episode 3, his colleague, girl Power, promises Denji that he can fondle her breasts three times if he is able to save her cat from a giant bat demon hiding in an abandoned house. Things go terribly wrong, the bat demon swallows Power and flies away, but then looks down—as Denji is hanging on to the demon's leg, saying: "Give me my tits back!" The whole storyline is full of these kind of humor and crazy style, but it also has stunning, incredibly detailed animation which gives it even a certain flair. Episode 7 breaks the high impression up to that point, though, and after it "Chainsaw Man" kind of loses its sense of humor and becomes just a routine fight-kill demons full of splatter violence at times. A really bad moment in episode 7 is at a dinner party, where a drunk Himeno decides to give Denji his first kiss, but due to alcohol, she throws up in his mouth. Disgusting and unnecessary. Later, after he passed out from alcohol, Denji wakes up in Himeno's room as she tries to have sex with him. He is tempted, but then remembers he only loves Makima and decides to save his "first time" for her. In a later episode, Himano dies due to a demon, which sends a rather somber message that sometimes it's better not to wait, but to indulge in some people's wishes while they are still alive. With only 12 episode, "Chainsaw Man" is concise and has no 'empty walk', yet its routine action second half drained a part of its freshness from the great opening episodes.

Grade:++