« Peu m'importe si l'Histoire nous considère comme des barbares »

Quelle est la dernière chose que je veux vraiment voir sur grand écran, même au Festival international du film de Karlovy Vary et dans le choix volontaire d'un film roumain ? ÇA. Les prétendus artistes créatifs qui analysent la moralité et l'éthique de l'histoire de leur pays pendant plus de deux heures et philosophent sur l'importance de son autopsie pour les nouvelles générations ou pour rappeler aux générations plus âgées. Les spectateurs pour lesquels cela devrait être « éducatif » ne le regarderont jamais de cette manière. Je donne une étoile pour la forme - ces longs plans avec des éléments complémentaires en arrière-plan nécessitaient une certaine planification de la réalisation. Sinon, c'est tout simplement ennuyeux. (05/07/2018)

The main idea of the film is to emphasize the importance of remembering the dark periods and events of national history in all their horror - in contrast to the opposing ideological stream, which tries to downplay and mitigate these voices. This is in itself very important and commendable, and I don't have much against this agitation. Unfortunately, due to its - at times strongly annoying - anti-spectator form, I found it quite boring overall. The film enriched me only with some snippets from dialogues containing interesting insights or philosophical ideas for me, but I did not find anything so fundamental there that would have a great significance for me to have seen this film. As a whole, it is tediously stretched out and too complicated. Perceiving someone reading for x minutes in Romanian a long excerpt from a book is truly a superhuman feat for me to maintain attention. The film will definitely find its audience, but unfortunately it did not capture me. Despite the strong theme, it does not contain any passage that truly grabbed me by the throat - even the promised "epic" finale did not succeed. So I say for myself: "I don't care if I go down in history as a barbarian who did not like this film." BTW: The director Radu Jude himself attended the official world premiere at KVIFF, and before the screening he informed the audience that this film is dedicated to Tomio Okamurovi, which tells you quite a bit about the director's creative intention. (03/07/2018)