La morte del signor Lazarescu

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

Shown at the New York and Chicago film festivals, October 2005. A Tartan Films release in the US, limited release scheduled for May 2006.

Puiu was inspired at nineteen by Jim Jarmusch's "Stanger Than Paradise" to become a filmmaker. He says "ER" is syndicated in Rumania: "When you watch the American show, there's movement in every direction, the choreography of the characters is amazing -- but I can't believe any of it." In "Mr. Lazarescu" Puiu does an "ER," Rumanian style. There's movement in only one direction -- following sixty-something Lazarescu, a drinker with a sore belly and a terrible headache, on a Saturday night in Bucharest when there has been a bad bus accident, after he calls 911. Puiu throws out hints of profundity with names in the script like Lazarus, Virgil, Dante, Remus, and Angel; and the trek from hospital to hospital as Lazarescu's diagnosis changes and his condition worsens can be seen as a journey through Hell. But the film didn't win the Un Certain Regard top prize at Cannes this year because of any message. It's Puiu's attention to detail, the precise planning of dialog and camera positions that gives a sense of documentary accuracy to the action and makes the film compulsively watchable and somehow unique and yet universal.

A splendid movie. Probably one of the top five selections of the New York Film Festival. There is much that can be said about it but really only one thing need be said: see it as soon as you can. Watch for a DVD release.

It's amazing to see this movie rated as comedy, and reading other people's comments I see the reasons it's so well rated differently. This movie it's a hard to swallow. Not comedy, maybe drama, supra-realistic. It's incredible for most of the people in most civilized countries that what you see there is what happens as a routine in Romania. No wonder Romania's minister of health didn't want to be present at the premiere in Bucharest. This movie is a very realistic reflection of what old or seek people get in Bucharest after paying their medical assurances for a lifetime. Of course it's a movie and there are also side aspects; but seeing the action.. it was nothing new for me. I've been through it with someone very dear to me, and i know what's happening in those hospitals.

This is one of those movies that you remember because it was different from any other. Well, the Anglo-Saxon viewers will probably remember Bringing Out the Dead with Nicholas Cage and find similarities. But this is not a film that focuses on the characters, but on the system, the people are ordinary people with ordinary needs and flaws, working inside a system that itself is not perfect.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a movie that wants to shock by presenting horrible flaws in a medical system we all need to trust, it is a film that presents the system close to reality, maybe even in a better light than most of us Romanians see it, and still flawed.

The story itself is based on a true event and the end is completely non judgemental. You get to see it and think about it, that is it. The true beauty of the film is the normality of every situation, the calm or unrest of people that is completely ordinary and the way it drags the subject of the movie (Lazarescu himself) from a sickly lonely old man, but otherwise a normal human being, to the end.

I think it is a good film overall, a great film as Romanian films are concerned, and also a good watch for non Romanians as well.

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.