User reviews

not different by many other Romanian historical films. mixture of patriotic emotions, adventure , fake and beautiful in same measure,occasion for create a nice role for Ion Popescu Gopo and to use the Communist Party commands for a kind of fairy tale, Cantemir is, in same measure,testimony about the way of Romanian cinema under a political regime. for many viewers , it could be unrealistic and almost silly. the plot is unconvincing, the veil of myth is more powerful than historical facts, the romantic clothes and unrealistic dialogs are subject of cruel irony. but the performance of actors, great actors is a real good point. in same measure, the search to define the portrait in frame of ideas is interesting. and ,in essence, like many films about a page of past, it represents beginning/invitation to discover the real side of events.

Ion Popescu Gopo as Peter the Great is the real surprise and the perfect spice for a film of good intentions but reduced as not real convincing portrait of a Moldavian prince. Alexandru Repan in the lead role does a beautiful job but the dialogues who are only collection of sentences, the ambition to open windows in the basic story who give fake perspectives, the silly situations who are far to convince are the reason to see with large benevolence a decent film with few not small errors. sure, it reflect the vision about national history of a dictatorship. sure, it remains beautiful like an old brooch. but its basic virtue is the status of start point for discover the fascinating personality of Dimitrie Cantemir. the film propose only a delicate , decent sketch, but it is enough for search the way of an ambitious young man who represents one of the early great cultural personality of Romanian civilization. and one of the most fascinating from Europe of his period.