With some effort in three receptions watched the film by the Romanian director Radu Jude “Bravo!” / Aferim!, 2015. I was prompted to take this step, as is often the case, high ratings of friends and numerous positive responses. The title of the film is already sarcastic, especially when you watch the movie. I read that the word Aferim! is borrowed from the Turkish language and means, as it were, a sarcastic “approval” of something that does not really deserve approval. That's right. The film is set in the first third of the 19th century in Wallachia, Romania, and as the credits show, the film is based on real events. Boyarin Iordake hires police officer Kostandin and his gendarme son Ionitsa to catch his runaway gypsy slave Karfin. And so we watch the search, the capture, and what happened next, all accompanied by constant dialogue and sometimes monologues by Kostandin and some others, especially the priest they met along the way. From them we can see a picture in which there is an extremely hostile attitude, even hatred, of representatives of different nationalities towards each other, in addition, we learn that the Roma at that time were slaves to the Romanians, they were not considered people at all and were called only ravens. We cannot say that there is only one “speech of hatred”, sometimes we see faint glimpses of reason and even, perhaps, humanity, but all this is so weak that it does not exert any special influence on what is happening. For example, Mr. suggests not to execute the escaped slave, since the culprit of what happened was the boyar’s wife, but simply beat him, a very “noble” gesture. It is disgusting to look at how people are treated, and not only at slaves, the policeman kisses the hands and the boyar, and his wife, whom he kind of respectfully interrogates, does not consider the boyar and the policeman to be a person. The ending is disgusting, but the main character calls on his son, who in between made a weak attempt to persuade his father to let Karfin go, forget all this and promises him a successful future. I must say that the film made a rather painful impression on me, although the intention of the director was clear to me, but it was unpleasant to watch and listen to all this, although at times it sounded very relevant, such speeches are heard now. Some note, however, some “gallows humor”, with this we can agree, some characters (the same boyars with completely stupid huge hats on their heads) look ridiculous, although humor still I do not consider it, it is like caricatures. It is believed that it is shot in the style of Westerns, although I do not think so, although yes, they ride horses all the time, there is a similarity in this, but not in the nature of the events. In short, I’m not sure that I can recommend it to everyone to watch, although the film was a success and received several awards, was nominated for an Oscar.
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