Closer to the Moon

Unless you have at least some basic knowledge about Communist Romania, this movie might seem very far away from a rating of 10. As the story unraveled, it sucked us into an atmosphere that most of us feel is long gone, and nevertheless, so close to us. It's the period when the first cracks in an apparently perfect egalitarian world started to appear. Robbing a bank with guns in a communist country is like robbing a supermarket of its toilette paper. Money then and there was useless unless you could justify its origin. And that is what makes this story so strange for us. But there are many, many other layers to the story. The cast is great. The historical background is fascinating (at least for us, Romanians). And the cinematography is far above average. This movie was like a breath of fresh air. One full of poisonous gases, as seeing the movie, you will discover that there are many things about the human race that will upset you, but at the same time, air that provokes an uncontrollable laugh. Some people in the audience didn't appreciate the jokes. I did, because I considered it was the only way not to make the most depressing movie in the world. A masterpiece that will most probably be considered as such many years from now, when people will start making movies about our not so egalitarian society.

Enjoyed watching this last night, good fun and a little less ordinary . well worth a watch

You've probably never heard of the Ioanid Gang, or the bank robbery that they carried out in Bucharest in 1959. I had never heard of it before I watched Nae Caranfil's "Closer to the Moon". The movie isn't any kind of masterpiece, but sufficiently looks at this incident, and how Romania's Soviet-backed government arrested the gang and forced them to star in a propaganda film reenacting the robbery.

One of the thing that we notice while watching the movie is the hypocrisy of the Eastern Bloc governments. They claimed that they were establishing classless societies but there was a high society (and the people in the government had no qualms about themselves jewelry). Later on, Nicolae Ceaușescu forced women to have as many children as possible, which overfilled Romania's orphanages. Most of the heads of state in the Eastern Bloc were typical ideologues, but Ceaușescu sounded like a mental case.

Anyway, the movie's worth seeing.

Although Closer To The Moon is based on true events some scenes in the movie just seem not very plausible. Those scenes, that are quite unbelievable and make no sense at all, made this movie lesser good than it should have been. I really doubt the 'gangsters' were that happy in those times. In the end credits you see the actual footage of their propaganda movie and nobody seemed happy there, much more realistic than the whole movie is trying to show. The cast is really top, all actors did a good job with their respective characters, so that was the best thing about this movie and that was what makes it worth watching. Plus the excellent directing from Nae Caranfil, not so much for his writing though. Closer To The Moon isn't bad for a one time viewing.

Much like JFK's assassination, the Great National Bank Robbery of 1959 is shrouded in mystery, the first being whether the robbery did in fact take place (or was instead fabricated to justify the purging of undesirable party members), and the second concerning the motives for the robbery. Here, Caranfil depicts the robbery as a real event symbolizing an act of resistance against a communist regime that has failed to live up to its ideals. It's an idealistic plotline that molds the protagonists into crafty anti-establishment heroes, and that's fine in principle, but I don't think he manages to convey his story convincingly.

The main problem is that Caranfil empowers his protagonists to the point where it becomes difficult to feel pathos for them. Rather than endowing them with a tragic backstory to make their suicide mission believable, he depicts them as privileged party members who live care-free and suffer from existential boredom more than anything else. And although their fate is ultimately in the hands of the authorities, they always seem to be in control of the situation: they plan and execute the heist without a hitch, knowing that they will get caught; they laugh at the authorities during their trial, and they make a mockery of the film shoot without getting reprimanded.

As far as authenticity is concerned, it also doesn't help that the director chose an English-speaking cast and portrays communist Romania as a rather idyllic setting (granted the late 1950s were a more liberal era than what came afterwards). That said, I give him credit for at least shooting it in Bucharest and having the actors pronounce the Romanian names accurately.

To be fair, it's not a terrible movie from any technical standpoint (acting, set design, cinematography, etc.) and I found it both genuinely funny and cringy, because you can't overlook the absurdity of 1950s Romanians speaking English with British accents (note: if you enjoy that, I recommend the 2017 TV-series Comrade Detective). But my impression is that the director missed a golden opportunity to create a black comedy that is both tragic and comic, choosing instead to shoot a light-hearted parody.