L'occident

My friends in Bucharest recommended this film: 'you must see it, it's better than 4-3-2'. 4-3-2 is the short for '4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days', the film that made director Cristian Mungiu known in the West and brought him a 'Palme d'Or' in Cannes exactly one year ago. I tend to agree, but I would add 'yes, better, but mostly for Romanian viewers'.

'Occident' deals with what has been in Communist Romania a national obsession and what became today a national and social phenomenon - the aspiration of the young generation to run away from a country where they cannot build a decent life and the mirage of the Occident. The story happens in the year 2000 and is told three times, from three different angles belonging each to a pair of characters, each time changing the perspective and revealing new angles of the story, changing its sense and even its ending. It is a smart story, in a style much more nervous than '4-3-2' which had a linear story telling, with long scenes giving the actors better opportunities for deeper performances.

And yet 'Occident' tells a lot of harsh truths about the Romanian society, about its corruption, emptiness, lack of education. All these will be much better understood by Romanian viewers however. It is also a different time, the characters in 'Occident' may be desperate to run away, but the difference is that they can do it, while '4-3-2' characters have no place to run. This may be one of the reasons that '4-3-2' impressed more viewers out of Romania. What happened in the last years of the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu was criminal and may be shocking for less initiated viewers, but is by no means news for most of the Romanians, excepting the very young ones. Ceausescu still sells better even after his death.

A chain of stories. Impecable portrait of characters. Bitter humor. Ways of survive. And the choices defining different situations. A honest, realistic portrait of Romanian realities. Seductive for inspired performances, for the exploration of cliches and for the science to propose only events , determining the viewer to build his conclusion. Young people. Solutions . Their parents. And small circles of survive , fake succes or appearences as refuges.

I like this movie, I like its construction, a blurred image that becomes clearer. Visan is like the wine in this movie, it has something inside him magic, a another dimension. More it gets older better he is. Hope so see more other movies of this quality. Congratulations for the "mise en scene". The rest of the actors are good enough as well. The context, if you are not Romanian, harder to be understood and felt like a Romanian could feel. I've spend a nice evening watching this, it is something different from the Hollywood dozen movies that are winning Oscars. It is real art and real art should stay in time, I hope that one day those movies would be easier to be found and seen on numeric format. It deserves an A++ for sure.

The movie achieved great success in Cannes festival. The greatest thing about it is the natural way of showing different stories around the same characters. Everyone could identify with one character in the movie. It is sad, showing that Romania is a country everyone wants to leave, seeking for a better life in Occident. Yet, the main character does not leave, not because he does not want to, but because he has nothing to do abroad. The movie shows different experiences from the point of view of each character. The end is unexpected, the further life of characters is unknown, you may imagine they succeeded abroad or not. Occident is not a social movie but a comedy, even if a black one, about people's goals, hopes, dreams. It does not want to emphasize the poverty in Romania, because it shows only the life of a certain group of people, which do not represent the entire Romanian nation. The team that made this movie is great, the director, the actors, the script, everything is great about this movie. This movie will change you, will make you wonder about things you never thought before.

A beautiful story about time, coincidences and happenstance. Three stories intertwine and characters influence one another's life without ever knowing it. Excellent and convincing performances from both veteran actors and newcomers. Even though it made me laugh a lot, after I finished watching it didn't taste like a comedy, but more like a sad love story. And even though love doesn't conquer all (love between man and woman, love between friends, love for one's country), the story doesn't feel hopeless and bleak, not even once. A must-see for anyone interested in Eastern European productions.

PS: The version I saw had English subtitles, but they were sometimes incomplete and a couple of times rather badly translated. I felt they didn't do their best to do justice to the lines.