Dallas Pashamende

Great movie with great performances! Even the story (the usual weak point of Hungarian movies) managed to capture me, although in retrospect it seems rather calculable and builds too much on usual clichés. The major strength of the movie is its atmosphere, built up by the shocking images of the gypsy ghetto and the amateur (well, they seem so real that I think they give themselves) cast. Also, roma communities are known for their lively and dominantly happy "southern" character, despite the poor conditions they live in: this is also shown here. I am sure that it takes more than this movie to make progress in emancipating the Romas of Central and Eastern Europe, but this movie certainly raises your understanding of these exploited people living "ganz unten".

I have just viewed this film at the Bangkok World Film Festival. From the opening scene, this is a film that is both visually compelling with a very good storyline. The story builds and builds and never gets bogged down in unnecessary emotionalism or morality. The story takes place in one of the most shocking locales ever filmed, a gypsy barrio in the middle of a garbage dump. The squalor, poverty, and, roughness of the people, are as real as it gets. Compelling beyond the natural revulsion that we feel viewing their condition of life, there is human tenderness, goodness, and, a natural sympathy we develop with the characters. Great acting, faces that are out of an Andre Kertesz photo book, and, all the hooks that make this a first rate film that should be seen by serious movie goers.

So many people underestimates this film, mostly because of its predictable storyline. However it won't take place in my hall of fame as an eternal masterpiece, it's a quite good movie. Because you cant walk beside it, you have to make your own thoughts about it.

Some suggested that the waste dump is a metaphor of the Carpathian basin or the Eastern European region. Have you ever seen this kind of waste dump, with romani people living in it? If you were "lucky" enough, you should know it's not a metaphor of a region, it's just pure reality about this dumps. This aspect of the movie is stunningly realistic.

The main massage of the movie is a huge tragedy. A tragedy which has a really cold touch as it reaches your hearth. No, not Radu's own personal tragedy. Not the horrible circumstances (both physically and mentally) in which this poor romani people live. No there is a more terrifying tragedy: the tragedy of "no hope". the tragedy of "no way out". If you found your way out of the garbage, you will lose your identity. To find your way back, you must left behind your "civilised self" You can't avoid to choose between this two, there's no equilibrium. You cannot be the part of the civilisation and the part of "Dallas" at the same time. And the worst: because of this paradox, the only one who has the abilities to show the way out of the waste, cannot be the savior of his people, nor a single child. The filmmakers couldn't manage to make this aspect come through really clear, maybe the tragical love story took too much air from it. The other significant problem: however the play of the actors is really good, the there are no emblematic characters which can make this film memorable (someone like Grga Pitic or Dadan in the famous Kusturica movie). That's why I say something is missing.

The story of Robert-Adrian Pejo's film is placed in the same space that inspired Kusturica in some of his most famous and best movies - the Balkan and Eastern Europe Roma communities. There is nothing magic or picturesque however in Pejo's vision about the life of a community living literally and symbolically in garbage. The principal hero is a teacher having escaped this environment a while ago who returns for the funeral of his father for one day that threatens to turn in the rest of his life. He faces the reality he wanted to escape, he meets again his forgotten and abandoned love, he is attracted back to the life he left, and he tries to fix things. Here is the weak part of the film, the story line is all but too predictable, good - villain relations are so obvious, and the hero behaves too much like a Hollywood character on one side, while the tragedy that awaits him is also so expected. On the good side the camera work is really exquisite, creating the sensation of cruel reality in such a true manner that the viewer almost can say smell the smoke and dirt of the landscape. Acting is also very good, especially supporting and even smaller roles are all veridical and moving. Music score is what you expect and as good as you can expect and from a good movie in the genre. If the story line was less conventional we could have watched a much better film, but this is still an interesting experience and a movie to watch.

The kind of film that gives to the cinema all its nobility. It has in the way of filming, something purified, factitious is far. In the middle of a discharge, men and women are at the borders of human dignity. Actors play truly. A film which oozes talent, indisputably. The originality of the history can not explain the success of this film, it is precisely from its simplicity, by its humility which it makes fully place to emotions, purity of the human relations. The role of Petru is particularly remarkable. This film is beautiful, well directed and puts on the light painful points of our society… one of the most authentic film I've never seen.