Romanian Film's Crystalline Lens

(Ifc Films)

Foremost among their concerns is the nature of the 1989 revolution. In "The Paper Will Be Blue," we learn how it went down, what it felt like to be there. In "12:08 East of Bucharest," we see the country years later, as people process the existential question: Was there, in fact, any real revolution, or change, in Romania? To that question, the film "California Dreamin' (Endless)" offers a partial answer: no. Thugs and corruption remain. Revolution is a process, not an event.

In "Traffic" and another short "Cigarettes and Coffee" (by Puiu), we see post-revolutionary Romania, and the social critique is severe. The latter, which took the Golden Bear for best short at the Berlin Film Festival in 2004, shows a father beseeching his son for help getting a job -- a series of long and excruciating shots of two men in a cafe, almost strangers to each other.

The revolution turned the country on its head, and now fathers solicit indifferent sons for help. In several of these films, the generational difference between parents who lived their lives under communism and younger people for whom it is an increasingly remote chapter, is examined unflinchingly. Without exception, these directors find the humanity in their parents.

Even in "California Dreamin'," in which a middle-aged railway officer uses red tape to stall an American train en route to Kosovo during the 1999 war, the villain is painfully sympathetic. He is a thief and a thug, hated by the town and perhaps his daughter as well. But carefully plotted flashbacks reveal that he has harbored a shattered romance for America since he was a boy -- and the illusions and disappointment of romance operate at every level in this masterpiece (made by Cristian Nemescu, who was killed at the age of 27 in a car accident). It is also one of the best films about how America is perceived abroad ever made.

The two films that represent Romania in the AFI European festival show the huge power of Romanian film, and the danger stalking it. "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" puts an abortion on screen -- not just the extortionate brutality of the back-alley abortionist and the emotional exposure of young women with nowhere to turn, but the process, the tubes, the spread legs, the waiting, the aftermath. Watching it will leave you furious not with the characters for their moral choices, but with the poverty of American artistic life. This is a film we could never make, because we refuse to look at reality. Mungiu has courage, and the results are a film expansive enough to contain the emotional and intellectual confusion that haunts the issue.

But then there's "The Way I Spent the End of the World," which also deals with the latter days of the Ceausescu regime, through the affairs and traumas of teenagers. Made by Mitulescu, the same director who made "Traffic," the film's credits list Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders as executive producers. Mitulescu won an award from Sundance and NHK, the Japanese television giant, which makes it likely his film will be broadcast there.

Alas, it's a huge step backward for the director. The film is smooth and accomplished, occasionally touching and expertly paced. The actors are beautiful, the music appealing. There are touches of light humor and gentle pathos. And it's generic, standard art house fare tailored to a wider audience.

Success breeds temptation, and it seems Mitulescu was tempted to do the one thing that American directors do better than Romanian ones: make money. One hopes it's an exception, and that reality isn't becoming enchanted once again.