Octav

This is indeed a beautiful movie, an exercise to see a movie with your heart and soul. No eastern European trends, finally a movie to honor this part of the world known just for the bad stuff. A great image, great music, great actors! Sublime, that is the word. Well done for discovering these two children, for sure we will see them more.

Rarely it happens for me to be amazed and even less to get to that point when I (almost) cry.

This movie did it. Sent me back directly to my childhood and took me in a fantastic journey trough some blurry yet shiny and sublime memories.

Yes, this movie is not for everyone and is not a movie to watch but rather feel. Also is probably best understood by a native Romanian speaker although probably it won't matter that much. However, once you have had those kind of memories, a movie like this can only work like a catalys and boost everything to sublime. I'm not overstating it. This film is a masterpiece, played masterfully by some of the best actors I know with a beautifully made cinematography and an extremely touching story. A masterpiece, indeed.

Slow, beautiful, emotional and almost painful... What is really remarkable in this movie is that it is a powerful trigger for your own memories. You are watching and waiting for the plot to unfold, but instead, your own life will be on the screen. You will see your childhood home, your friends, your first love, your first kiss, your friends, the backyard, the street where you were playing and so on. I have never experienced something like that in a movie theater. Beautiful! Beautiful and unique.

You can have someone, during a Bruckner symphony, screaming inside "Oh my God, get me out of here!". Or, you can have another one exclaiming "what the hell is this" to a Mondrian painting. And, of course, you have the critics, who will tell you what to like and why. Octav is no different. Some will leave in the middle of the movie, some will tell you it was a drag, and probably the critics will say "meh, nothing new here, move along".

You should do what I did and see for yourself. And maybe you will hate it, or, like myself, will leave the movie theater filled with questions, feelings and an emotional conclusion. Yes, the one that you will not be able to articulate in words. And, after all, that conclusion is the only one I care about, every time I am watching a movie, read a novel or listen to a concert. It is all about that. What are you taking with you? What really matters to you? What will remain not after your life, but after your emotional journey? What are your memories made of?

After watching this movie, I couldn't even talk for a while. It felt like a powerful plow raked throughout the beaten ground of my own memories. Forgotten memories popped out, old feelings brought back to life, the smell of my grandfather's tobacco, the dust in the light of the attic in my childhood home, the river where I would go fishing with my father... Memories that I didn't even know I still have. How and why all of this happened, I don't know and it doesn't matter. But it was beautiful. And I will give it some time and I will go watch it again, maybe it will happen once more.

Play a piano in a barn and you will have a horrible result. Play the same piano in a concert hall and you will have a very different outcome. If you feel that you have the proper acoustic for this kind of movie, go watch it! You will resonate.

Background: An estate in Romania where a wealthy family with a young son, Octav, lived until the late '40s when the USSR led communist government took over the property. Fast forward to nearly the present as that young boy now in his early '80s is essentially broke as he goes though appeals in the court system to regain the property. He comes back to sell this memory to pay off debts, and in the process meets the estate's caretaker that he knew as a boy. Importantly, memories in the form of flashbacks, especially of his father & also of a young girl, alternate w/the reality of the moment. Left unanswered (perhaps purposefully so as to not distract from the central story): Where he & others were in the intervening years. The house is full of antiquities, oddly in pristine condition, which could be sold to pay off his debts.