Der Tod des Herrn Lazarescu

Winner of the Un Certain Regard in Cannes, is like a version of "E.R" truly realistic, with the good, bad, indifferent, attentive, humble, arrogant, and, above all, human doctors. The title-character is far from being a hero, but that makes it easier to sympathize with him, which is essential here: we really feel like we were Lazarescus, going from hospital to hospital waiting for the help, never being treated properly, and the situation getting worse and worse as times goes by. Puiu's creates a documentary-like atmosphere to an almost Kafka-like situation, and fills the movie with dark humor and moments which can be shocking, but are never there just for that purpose. The entire cast delivers solid performances, specially Fiscuteanu as the remarkable Lazarescu Dante Remus and Luminita Gheorghiu as the paramedic. Reminded me of Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man" (one of his best and certainly the most overlooked), another documentary-like film about a man in a absurd, but also realistic, situation in a system that doesn't care about him. One of the best pictures of 2005.

Forty years after the last big prize received by Liviu Ciulei, director Cristi Puiu is back in the Cannes festival list of prizes with this strong but sensible creation. A new generation of Romanian cinema makers is born, and it not only succeeds in making a strong statement about the situation in today's Romania, but does it in a way that makes sense for international audiences.

There are three levels one can see Puiu's film. The first is the relation between the single human and the medical system. 'Moartea domnului Lazarescu' is the anti-'ER' with the universal character of the paternal doctor, playing God just to hide his own lack of competence and his indifference is kind of universal.

Then we have the story of Dante (yes!) Lazarescu descending in five hours the spiral stairs between being a pauper drunken in today's Bucharest towards almost certain physical death. An yet, despite the gradual physical degradation admirably acted by Ion Fiscuteanu, Mr. Lazarescu keeps intact his moral and human dignity, even as he slowly slides into a comma.

I am not sure whether folks who did not live in Romania or other former communist countries will catch easily the third layer. Lazarescu lives in a world in decomposition. Dictature is gone, but no social help system replaced it, his family is far away, his neighbors are simple people, indifferent and hardly coping with their own problem. Yet, in this decrepit medium he will find in the assistant Mioara a caring person, who will not only try to save him, but will ease his last hours with the feeling that yet there is somebody who cared for him. It's not quality of life, it's more - quality of humanity.

For anyone who has made a trip to or has accompanied a loved one to the emergency room, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" may be too realistic to bear.

A few years ago, my family called the ambulance for one of our relatives. He was having vague back pain -- we couldn't get him to communicate with us about it. He didn't want to go to the hospital, but his pain was too great for him not to. He is an alcoholic, and to this day lives under the assumption that none of us know he's an alcoholic, so I think his fear of the hospital had somewhat to do with the fear that his "secret" would be exposed. We ended up in a living hell of smug doctors, each with a different diagnosis of his condition, but who were all in agreement that the patient should be treated like dirt because of his addiction. If he wasn't going to care about his own health, they seemed to think, then why should they?

So needless to say, despite the fact that it takes place in Romania, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" hit frightfully close to home for me, as it's about a lonely, alcoholic man and his nighttime trip into the purgatory of emergency-room bureaucracy. The foreign setting aside, this film could have taken place in the USA and been no different. Nobody has time for Mr. Lazarescu, everyone has a different theory as to what is wrong with him, the nurses are more interested in making sure paperwork is filled out than they are in taking care of the living, breathing human being suffering -- and perhaps dying -- on the stretcher in front of them. In one scene, the doctors insult and belittle the ambulance nurse when she tries to offer her own assessment of Mr. Lazarescu's condition, holding their advanced schooling over and against her. We don't learn much about Mr. Lazarescu, and so we see events occur from the perspective of this paramedic who takes charge of him and carts him from one hospital to the next in a desperate attempt to find one that will treat him. To her, Mr. Lazarescu is a job, yet she's the closest thing to a caring relative he has, so cold and indifferent is the rest of the health care world.

This film is astonishing in its meticulous detail, and it's hard to believe it's not a documentary, something out of the world of Fredrick Wiseman. Most scenes are filmed in long takes, the camera standing back at an objective distance simply capturing the whirl of human activity taking place around it. The acting is amazing, for the very reason that no one seems to be acting. It's a deeply unsettling film; we know Mr. Lazarescu will likely die -- from cancer if not from the surgery he's about to undergo when the film closes, and anyway, the title tells us as much. But we don't see him die in the film -- the last scene is of him being washed, shaved and dressed for surgery, a human being reduced to a slab of living flesh on a table, robbed of even his last shred of dignity, while no one appears to care. Somehow, that lack of closure is one of the most unsettling things in the film; it captures the feeling one has when you've finally gotten your loved one to the hospital and all you can do is wait, not sure whether or not you're going to see him alive again.

Grade: A

The medical system, if you want to call it that, because there's nothing really systematic about it, is savagely explored in the curiously interesting " Death Of Mister Lazarescu", a movie that I'm liking more and more now that I think back on what I saw. Essentially following a hellish night of a lout who gets head and chest pains and then dares to call the ambulance and better yet, dares to go to a hospital. I kind of wonder about this exposure of the medical system, even though it does take place in Romania, whether the same thing could happen here, eg, the type of medical care largely depends on your social class and whether you have enough money or not. Having said that. The lead actor, one Ion Fiscuteanu, is simply phenomenal in the title role as a belligerent old drunk who rather grudgingly goes to the hospital, and as he gets shuffled from hospital to hospital (largely because of a bus accident that swamped many of the E.Rs in the city, becomes less and less communicative… What a show, and what heartless people the hospital people are! Not just to the patient, who can't stop commenting about his drinking, but also to the EMT's, who dare to offer medical opinions but then are shot down because "they are'nt doctors". OUCH! What a show! If you ever get a chance, try to go see this one.

This movie is certainly not a comedy as some reviews claimed. This is a documentary-like shot movie about being old, lonely and dying. Dehumanization and absence of compassion are also two of the themes treated here. The story is focused on the context of Romanian hospitals, but this could be generalized to most social systems globally, i think. And my own experience of old people dying in hospitals here in Belgium is of course not so awful, but somehow related to Mr. Lazarescu's experience. And even the nice characters, who really try to help, don't really change anything to the poor guy's fate. So this movie is really deeply pessimistic. In my opinion, it was also a bit too long (about 150 min.) and definitely not easy-watching. But interesting and thought-provoking (and a bit depressing too...)