Orient Express

I saw this film yesterday. with fear to be a disappointment. as piece for define Nicolaescu silhouette. and my verdict is not very enthusiastic - it is a self-portrait, a will and , in same measure, a grave. because it reflects his world. his vision. about himself and about Romanian society. because long speeches and not inspired dialogs are bricks for his posterity. it is a chaotic melancholic movie. a show of lessons. and broken stories. remarkable presence - Gheorghe Dinică. interesting presence - Dan Puric. but each of them is only promise. it is a strange film. not an adaptation. only a kind of diary. not bad but in many scenes - boring. drops, slices, shadows of feelings. and a figure of a prince far from time and people. an inhuman prince. crumbs from Felix and Otilia . fall of an universe and last gesture of a version for king Lear. and conclusion - Sergiu Nicolaescu was not an actor. only hanger. for its characters.

it has many sins of Sergiu Nicolaescu films. in same measure, its great vulnerability are the dialogues. artificial, theatrical, unconvincing. the good point - the atmosphere. and the nice choice for Dan Bittmann in the role of young Moruzi. sure, it is a homage of director to himself. it is obvious this fact but not so bad. because, after the end, important is the voice from the past. the nostalgia and the lost beauty, the flavor of pink novels and the remember of Ecclesiastes. film about a life. about love, friendship, greed and selfishness. about lost of the beauties of the youth. and about memories. nothing original but enough for a not so boring trip.

The kind of movie that let's you in it even though you left the cinema for a while. Makes room for that pure epic performance very few Romanian movies have. And still all that drama is Noble, not shocking. It let's you know that higher class is maybe not so bad, maybe dirt is not so much better then cleanliness, and it spits on every single movie promoting common things we see every day. A very brave movie because it doesn't try to make ordinary people feel good about themselves, it doesn't use issues that most people find themselves in. It has almost no connection to the real world, or any significant parts of Romanian history. It's a solitary and original movie from all points of view. A production that's worth respect.

It's hard to find a single good aspect of the movie, except for strong acting from romanian star Gheorghe Dinica and surprisingly nice performance of Valentin Teodosiu, an actor which i my opinion deserves better roles then he usually gets in movies.

For the rest, the didactic speech of the main character, spread over half the movies, practically kills any interest for the picture quite quickly.

Mr Nicolaescu should realise that the audience is hardly interested in his vision about nobility, or in a romantic image of the last days of the romanian aristocracy.

With the two exceptions already mentioned, acting is 70'ish and of a poor quality, the movie has lost of clichés and generally speaking, without being a horrible experience, is practically a waste of time to watch.

I know most of Sergiu Nicolaesu's work and somehow in my early childhood back in Romania I enjoyed it. There were mainly war movies going all the way from The Romans and Dacians till The Second World War battles. But this one is a caricature of a flick... No substance, bad acting, no camera movement just to name a few... The actors are incredible dull and shallow and the plot... but what the hack... there is no plot, just a narcissistic character with some gushy women orbiting around him. It seems as it was intended to be a C movie from the start and hopefully it does. So save your ticket and popcorn money for something more interesting.