Requiem für Dominik

It may not have had much chance of finding an audience in a season of bubblegum blockbusters ('Terminator II' was released that same summer), but this small German docu-drama was, nevertheless, one of the more devastating films in quite some time. The story is simple: an expatriate Romanian returns home during the last, desperate days of Ceausescu's regime, only to find his childhood friend Dominic held captive in a local hospital after supposedly killing eighty people in a sniping attack. But what makes the film more than just a topical drama is the way director Robert Dornhelm seamlessly incorporates documentary video footage alongside his actors, adding a sense of urgency and immediacy rarely seen in movies these days. It's not always an easy film to watch ("the truth is not pretty", says the dying Dominic) and the political background can be a little confusing to anyone not familiar with the issues, but it's impossible not to become swept up in the terrible excitement of a revolution in progress; the experience can't be dismissed by saying it's only a movie.

dark in many ways, murky even.

but all time great mix of fact and fiction.

it's betrayal within betrayals - and you can't figure out what's real -

on all different levels of real!

The film was shot in Romania even as the revolution overturning communist rule was taking place. The realism of this film was accented by certain portions being shot with video rather than on film. This is a high impact movie that made me as a westerner walk away with a greater appreciation of the freedoms I enjoy.

Highly recommended, not for general audience.

Director Robert Dornhelm refrains from pointing a moral within this extraordinary film, based upon actual events and persons, that depicts the initial frenetic days during which anti-Communist revolutionaries caused the fall from power of Roumanian President Nicolai Ceausescu in December 1989, yet at one point a character remarks that "we have forgotten how to think", and this drastic failing is a most significant factor behind the capricious actions of many of those involved in the Roumanian people's uprising. Dornhelm, who was born in Timisoara but raised in Austria, was a childhood friend of Dominic Paraschiv, and following the latter's death, returned to the city of his birth in an attempt to discover what he could about Dominic, referred to during the course of the Revolution as the "Butcher of Timisoara", charged with murdering 80 or more freedom fighters; to the mind of Dornhelm, this is an obvious exaggeration or, perhaps, a complete fabrication. Felix Mitterer is featured as Paul Weiss, surrogate for Dornhelm, and additionally co-scriptor, his role being a member of a Red Cross team sent to Timisoara in order to remove Paraschiv into safety within Vienna, but Paul quickly discovers that, as a friend of Dominic, he is considered as an associate of a "terrorist", mass murderer, and foe of a state reborn, with this absorbing narrative following Paul's struggles against uncaring bureaucrats, (not so) former Securitate (Roumanian secret police) functionaries, and hostile or indifferent international journalists. Actual footage of the massive demonstrations and of the grievously wounded Paraschiv is seamlessly merged with staged sequences, producing many visually memorable sequences that reveal the potential birth of a revolutionary sensibility that, sadly, is more challenged by its customary subservience than by any likelihood for fresh governance. Intentionally fragmented at times, the film's storyline nonetheless is essentially linear as Weiss, accompanied by a sympathetic Austrian journalist, Clara Weber (Viktoria Schubert), searches for some truth in the matter of Paraschiv, stubbornly going beyond reasonable limits, battling as well against vicious interference from Securitate members who intend to impede Paul in his efforts. Clara is in Timisoara in hopes of developing a pleasant Christmastime story connected with Dominic but naturally begins to have grave doubts of his being "a hero in a city of heroes", a city having no one in control and tormented by sniper fire from renegade Securitate agents who, simply by affixing armbands, are theoretically transposed into proletarian members of the anti-totalitarian revolution. However, following a meeting with Paul and Dominic's wife Codruta (also seen later by actual footage following her husband's passing), Clara begins to discount generally accepted opinion that this Catholic politically liberal chemical engineer, thoroughly devoted to his family, would abruptly become a homicidal berserker. Tenuous and unnatural alliances are made and soon ended, with a viewer left to ponder over who may comprise the small bands of armed men fighting with each other in Timisoara, since it is apparent that they may not themselves know, for it is made clear that television reports from neighbouring nations are more confusing than informative. Emotionally moving footage is incorporated of Paraschiv upon his deathbed as he avers that "we will only win with love and kindness", a signal moment in this documentary tinctured film, made with commendable skill by all involved, of a society's only tentative collapse. This is an Austrian-made production with dialogue in German in addition to occasional Roumanian, English and Magyar, with accurate English subtitles throughout, and there is a fine descriptive score from Harald Kloser. The work benefits from excellent direction, design, acting and photography and a DVD version would be of substantial value.

Requiem for Dominic powerfully portrayed the upheaval in that liminal space between revolution and order. This drama is captured partly on film, partly on video adding to the gritty reality of the time, place and events as they were unfolding in Eastern Europe as the "Iron Curtain" collapsed. This picture needs to make its way to video to reach a wider audience and gain the recognition it deserves.