Gadjo Dilo - Geliebter Fremder

"Gadjo Dilo" shows the trip of a young man in search of a voice that he fell in love with. Stéphane (Roman Duris) is a musicologist that just follows his guts, his instinct, to find the mysterious singer Nora Luca in Romania. He follows a passionate and realistic journey that teaches himself the gypsy way of being. Quite different from the Kusturica approach, Tony Gatlif's music is more intimate of the true gypsy soul and enables us to feel and understand it. With this "musical anthropological" view a stunning portrait of this culture is made, with all it's roughness and spontaneity. As a viewer i grew as a person with this movie, some preconceptions were broken and a great admiration was born for the Romanian nomads.

I believe that "Gadjo Dilo" is a true approach to the gypsy way of being, a music that will inspire your future steps.

This lyrical, poetic masterpiece of cinematic art sucks you into the minds and souls of a still enigmatic, clannish culture, as Stephane, the urbanised, DAT-carrying Frenchman confronts both his own Western attitudes and the wistful, dogged independence of an oft persecuted race. The veracity of the work borders on cinema verite, such is the power of the performances coaxed with consummate skill by writer/director Tony Gatlif, himself a Romany, from a largely non-professional cast.

The plot hardly bears mentioning, as this is an exemplar of film as art, i.e. an exploration of the human spirit. One could wax lyrical about Stephane's mission to find the gypsy singer who's voice chicken skins him as a journey into his own psyche, or other such pyschobabble, but ultimately, even though framed by a love story and imbued with classical dramatic elements of pathos, comedy and tragedy, through all the elements that make film such a singular artistic vehicle - sound, music, image, performance - this work envelops you in swaddling-cloth, twists at the core of your soul, and vicariously makes you pursue the Holy Grail of the meaning of life.

I can't claim to have seen anything in at least a year, probably dating back to "Welcome to the Dollhouse", that has touched me in the way that this work did. For all those who think that trite eye candy like "Saving Private Ryan" represents a milestone in cinema art, an education moment in the company of Stephane and his collective muse will persuade you that true artistic creativity lies in exposing the seemingly mundane banalities that constitute our daily lives.

There's several reasons for it. Rona Hartner's acting. Adrian "Copilu minune" Simionescu's music and, maybe most of all, Izidor Serban's intensity. As far as I know, he is a complete acting amateur. My wife is Romanian, and I play bass with one, maybe the only, gypsy orchestra in Sweden - with roma from Macedonia, Serbia and Bulgaria. I know their language a bit, but it is not the same dialect as in the movie, which I guess is "kaldarash", the guys in the band speaks "arlija". We do some of Adrian's songs, though... If you liked this movie I recommend the documentary "Iag Bari", which is a film about the moldovan gypsy brass band Fanfare Ciocârlia.

This film tells of one man's search for a singer amidst the chaotically beautiful gypsies of Roumania. It is a delicious, funny, crazy and richly erotic celebration of the wildness in the human spirit. Yet there is a shadowy undercurrent that surfaces at times in the film. This is honestly faced and thus the story avoids romanticising of a culture that the director evidently knows well (he was of gypsy birth himself). Despite the destructive power of this shadow what remains is a sense of the power of survival, joy, and a memory of music that is compelling beautiful.

I would just like to say a few words about the comment of bplesa, which is more or less correct, but, in my opinion, needs some explaining regarding the title of the movie. I doubt that "crazy romanian" would be a correct translation since the title most probably refers to the french guy which, obviously, is not romanian. It could be "extended" to "crazy stranger" since he is a stranger, but i think the only translation that can be considered correct is "Crazy Guy". Gadjo and Dilo, the two words from the title, are used in romanian slang, as "gagiu", respectively "diliu", and of course were adopted from Romani (the language of the gypsies). There meaning is: gagiu=guy, diliu=crazy, so... I think that says it all.