Îmi este indiferent daca în istorie vom intra ca barbari

Radu Jude's "Îmi este indiferent daca în istorie vom intra ca barbari" ("I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians" in English) does two things at once. The most important is that it looks at a shameful instance in Romania's history: the army's massacre of Jews in Bessarabia, even before the Nazis arrived (one of the Nazi officials even complained that the Romanian army was simply going ahead and killing Jews!).

But the other issue addressed is how Romania has treated this in years since. Romania, like the rest of Europe, wants to simply think that it was a victim of the Nazis; in reality - as in most of Europe's other countries - plenty of its citizens were delighted to help the Nazis.

The protagonist is a woman making a movie about the 1941 Odessa Massacre carried out by the Romanian army, with the title referring to a quote from Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu. During the movie's production, a number of people start revealing their unwillingness to acknowledge the country's history. As someone notes, it's comforting to be the good guy.

It's not a masterpiece, but it still calls into question how much anyone is willing to recognize the bad parts of their own country's history. As John Quincy Adams once said, the historian must have no country (and the one character does even note the US's sordid history).

This film is a great feat, with a universal message regarding the difficulty in facing our true national images in the mirror, including savage, murderous episodes. Exquisite acting and art, as well as nuanced irony neatly combined with grave philosophising and serious storytelling. I was glued to the screen for the entire 2 hours and 20 minutes.

This movie is... wait, is it a movie? 😂 i highly recommend this whatever-it-is-being-called to those time killers who believe that history is documented & teached on History channel.

good job, guys! not.

I wat lch a lot of movie from all countries and all genres, but this is the most boring piece of ... I ever saw. It shows an actress/ director doing research. She reeds a couple of minutes from a book, watches a youtubefilm, walks through a museum and lays naked in bed with her boyfriend. That was the first 45 minutes...

The photography was amaturistic and ugly, the discussions between the cast irritating and a mess.

Avoid, avoid, avoid!

I saw the movie at the Seattle Film Festival. The subject matter is relevant and intriguing from a social point of view - so the movie had the potential of being poignant and thought provoking. Instead, it feels as if the editor had been AWOL. The first hour and a half of the movie is peppered with irrelevant scenes, gratuitous coarse "humor" that is neither here nor there, and static shots with noise in the background (not unlike the time I accidentally hit record while pointing at the floor). Had it been a topic that I didn't have a personal interest in, I would have walked out of the theater after the first hour.

Surprisingly, the movie does end strongly. A good editing job could probably do wonders, producing a good 1 hour long movie. And that, in my book, would be preferable.