User Reviews

One of my favorite films at the Seattle international film festival (SIFF2003), and I had the chance to see it again during a brief run. I agree with the positive comments by other readers. A true cinematic gem, told in a folkloric tragedy. But there's this one scene that i absolutely love because it's a tribute to early german expressionist cinema. The way it is shot and edited, is what excellent cinema survives on. I know that sounds very vague, but that's how speechless the scene leaves me. Ok here it is: This is a possible spoiler so don't read on if you don't want to know the plot:

During one murder scene: it is night. THe victim is in the outside bathroom (small cabin) and the killer approaches. He has a white goose under his armpit. The victim sees the killer thru the square window on the door.

1)The face of the killer approaches (POV of victim) 2) CUT TO: goose flapping winds while shrieking in the air 3) CUT TO: THe face of victim steps back and disapears into the darkness of the cabin 4) CUT TO: killer enters cabin and the cabin shakes while we hear grunts and moans and while farm equipment that were leaning against the cabin fall to the ground.

I mean, this is stuff that is very simple but once constructed it looks amazing and cinematic. And there are plenty of scenes like this. I think this is a marvelous accomplishment. Congrats to the filmmaker.

This movies teaches what several other movies have taught us about rural Romania: men get drunk all the time, women get easily raped, everyone is pretty fiery tempered and seek revenge, everything is sordid and backward and violence is pretty much anywhere. Well, i've been told that rural Romania is not exactly a very "happy place to be", with serious problems of alcoholism and woman beating, but yet this is a little bit too much i'm afraid. All the elements of decadence typical of a certain kind of very arty art-movies is displayed all along the movie (included some unnecessary violence on animals - a pig getting slaughtered, a goose having its head cut - that alway give the spectator that disturbing, creepy feeling he's seeking for. The "hero", a butcher, comes back home from prison and during the journey, by gambling, he "wins" the body of the other card player's wife to use (well, he rapes her in the train toilet). At home he discovers that his wife has been raped (again?) by his own brother one night when he was drunk and that now she's pregnant. He decides to run away and kills his own brother while her wife and mother get burned alive by the Gypsies seeking revenge. He comes back to the village (the Gypsies being blamed for his brother's murder too) where a charming girl he used to have sex with tries to seduce him again (who cares if he lost wife and mother one night before? lust is lust) - anyway we can imagine Romanian wives don't expect their husband to be monogamous as far as they don't get raped or beaten up. And so on... Unpleasant to watch, not really surreal yet not really naturalistic, quite well-acted, grim, sordid, and hopeless. I am not into Hollywood movies or Walt Disney but i would define this a rather phony, sordid art-movie more than a real masterpiece.