The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

When The Death of Mr. Lazarescu won the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2005, it was Romanian’s cinema great international breakthrough, and the harbinger of the wave of award-winning films that has included 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, 12:08 Bucharest, and Police, Adjective. The film, director Cristi Puiu’s second feature, unfolds in something like real-time, and offers a spellbinding blend of realism, humanism, black humour and suspense; a summation of the grim-sounding plot hardly does it justice. Mr. Lazarescu, a cranky, ailing alcoholic who lives alone in a cramped Bucharest flat, is stricken seriously ill. His neighbours finally summon an ambulance, which takes some doing, but the medics are unable to find a hospital to admit him; they spend the night shuffling poor Mr. Lazarescu from one overcrowded, overtaxed emergency ward to another. Dante, Frederick Wiseman’s documentaries, the Dardenne brothers’ social dramas, television’s ER, Eric Rohmer’s “Moral Tales” – all are antecedents for Puiu’s remarkable achievement here. Cinematographer Oleg Mutu also shot 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. “It may sound like an ordeal, but this 153-minute Romanian odyssey is anything but. Both sad and darkly funny, the film is sharply conceived and richly populated. . . Puiu is already clearly a master (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader). Colour, in Romanian with English subtitles. 153 mins.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Please note: Due to a shipping issue beyond our control, the screening of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu on Monday, February 22 will be presented in digital projection. The following screenings on Saturday, February 27 & Sunday, February 28 will be presented in 35mm format.