Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife

As a disclaimer, I need to say that I couldn't get through the whole thing and I exited the theater after 70min which were grueling. Yet another piece of "great" Romanian cinema, exploiting very opportunistically a fairly popular and sensitive topic, but doing so in a fashion that's barely scratching any surface. First of all, it leaves you questioning: what am I watching? Is it really a documentary? Just rallying people as the result of a casting, as it's announced in the beginning, making them act all kinds of scenes and putting them in absurd feint of a focus group where they are supposed to exchange thoughts and opinions. It constantly gives a sense of mockery and superiority over the people appearing in the film. Over their values, thoughts and attitudes.

There is absolutely no substance, no matter how hard you try to find it. There is no depth, no intellectual or mindful exploration. And if it really is a documentary, then it's about nothing and it's actually a big joke. If that's the point, then bravo!

The film aligns with the post-revolutionary trends of hard-won freedom of expression and follows a directorial interpretation marked by Mr. Solomon's internal struggle, as he himself acknowledges in the film, manifesting criticism against a society that values myths. This director, self-styled as a modern-day Baudelaire, yearns to capture the stark duality akin to 'Flowers of Evil' and focuses exclusively on satirizing contemporary society, decisively addressing the challenge posed by those who profane and desacralize the most abject spiritual references of contemporary Romanian culture.

The lack of empathy, tendentious documentation, and the transformation of secondary figures into characters seemingly accepting the humiliation of scriptwriting turn the film into a manifestation of disdain towards those who find solace in faith as an anchor of goodness.

I conclude by paying tribute and offering advanced congratulations to the Great director Solon (intentional misspelling) for the moment of receiving the Bear at Berlin, with a quote from the esteemed CTP, reinterpreted by TNR in the context of Teambuilding: "The director confidently leads this histrionic and unrepeatable burlesque carnival, leaving the impression of a protracted rehearsal of lines until diamond-like perfection."