Closer to the Moon

Almost all high-rate Romanian directors have a somewhat perverted fetish about Communist Romania stories. That being said, if you've seen a Romanian movie from the 2000's until present day, in over 90% of the cases it's some story set in Communist Romania,and how bad it was and how people where so against it all. Nothing further from the truth! All of these stories are filled with one-sided prejudice opinions and resemble the directors view of the world. So, this movie isn't any different from all the other famed movies our directors have launched in the past years about pre-1989 Romania. The Ioanid gang, who where a bunch of superficial silly Bonn vivers on film where in fact a gang of guys (and a girl) with no ideological stance to their continuous dissidence before the WWII and afterwards. They where acting against the regimes only for the fun of it, for the adventurous filling of being in contradiction with those in power , not because they opposed Nazism and Communism as ideologies. They where Jews, who where oppressed by the Romanian Nazi collaborators and afterwards resented by the same Romanian Nazi collaborators(fascist legionnaires disguised as Communists and Bolsheviks as Romanian Iron Guard followers where to do after Germany lost the war) wrapped in the red flag of Communism. All in all the actors played their parts well, as they are professionals. But the storytelling, the way Caranfil romanticized a bunch of fools is not to my taste. As a different approach by our distinguished directors, I'd like to see a movie about the atrocities committed in the years when fascists where in power in Romania, when our 'honorable' King Carol II imposed his dictatorial regime, banning parties and letting the legionnaires from the Iron Guard rise to power before slaughtering them as they, in return, set Bucharest on fire and killed many Romanian Jews and other personalities such as Nicolae Iorga. But there is no real interest. It is more comfortable to pick the same over done subject of Communist Romania. My advice to you after seeing this artistic movie is to see the real reenactment "propaganda" movie made by the authorities in 1960. It's with the real participants and has a better way to sticking to facts as they occurred.

Vera Farmiga and Mark Strong played Romanian Jewish Communists who along with three others plot to rob the Romanian State Bank, a crime punishable by death. The court and country decide to use the case to teach a lesson in propaganda film. The burglars are acting as themselves in this film. The burglary was more about robbing the bank but anti-Communist. There is a nice romance in the film as well. Vera Farmiga and Mark Strong gave the best performances in the film. I would have liked to know more about it. The film was shot on location abroad.

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.

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.

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.