Forests "Transylvania" means "zalesie." A different face of civilization, revealed to you after a dangerous attempt to find out the exact number of bears in the border forest. Rational Germans called Transylvania in their own way, Semigrady. A senseless attempt to restore order behind the forest by erecting seven fortresses. Modern fortresses have new names – European integration, Ecology, Multiculturalism, Technology, ... Let them build – and the higher and inaccessible the fortress, the better. Only sometimes they can be useful - for example, in order to go and do an MRI.
But do not try to build a house near the fortress wall. Its architecture is unlikely to fit into the local tradition of celebrating Christmas with the memory of centuries-old intertribal enmity, carefully preserved in the annual competition of mountain dwellers with valley dwellers for the prize, which was Christmas Eve. Not the most numerous local tribe calls (Catholic!) the church only its own, and the children, instead of Christmas stories, remember on mornings the claims of the residents of Muntenia to the Moldavians. And in this lush tradition, Tsilya decided to build a house next to the Multicultural Fortress, hiring several Asians to work in a bakery. Qilya, did they drive out the Gypsies in order to accept the Asians after years of “calmness”?
Christian Mungiu refers to a story that really took place a few years ago, when the Hungarian minority rebelled against Sri Lankan migrants who came to the village for work. The director continues to develop the theme of small closed communities, which began in the film “Beyond the Hills”, the inner logic of the behavior of which is explained (but not known – this is apparently impossible for the observer) only by a deep dive into the environment. Also in the image of Matthias, the lover of Tsili, the theme of upbringing and caring for the child, started in the “Prom”. Instead of an educated doctor, Romeo is a rural butcher Matthias, no less than an intellectual concerned about the world in which his child will live.
Mungiu calls his work a picture that diagnoses, like an MRI, the consciousness of society during a period of anxiety about the state of health. Matthias’s child, Rudy’s boy, who suddenly stopped speaking, becomes an alarmist in the film. Matthias needs to calm his son and prepare him for what? To stand up for yourself? To survival in the wild? Living in Tribal Conflict? They have already deprived a good half of the inhabitants of their individuality and brought to life something that approached the village at gunshot distance. In which direction will it be directed and how long will the war last? Or maybe we'll continue, like Qilya, to enjoy socializing and classical music? We will return to this picture in 10 years and find out the answer.
8 out of 10
Original