Change Your Image
herbertklos
Reviews
Si totul era nimic (2006)
How was it possible?
It's incredible such a disgraceful piece of unprofessionalism can even be conceived, not to say about shooting it, with loads of money that could be used to encourage the debuts of the young directors! The story is incomprehensible, and one could label it as "kindergarten level", if it wasn't true that toddlers are INTELLIGENT humans, perceptive and creative! This plot is primitive, fragmented, chaotic, boring, meaningless - the author simply has no idea that script-writing is a profession, she believes it's enough to put on paper a messy pile of descriptions, happenings and spoken words, not caring about the least logic and unity. You are grabbed by laughin-cryin', as Nichita Stanescu used to say, when you think about that aberrant story of the so-called Muslim who out of the blue converted to Christianism and became a manelist, only to later turn into an icons painter! And his named, "Tzâtzädemâtzä" (what means "Cat's tit") - perhaps imagining this is an interesting and innovative name...! Oh my God! But this is nothing compared with the so-called "directing" - so dilettante, so crude, so rudimentary, that one can't help but wonder: wasn't there ANYONE lucid enough to tell her: "Hey, you, sit down there and let the set-hands take care the direction, they will definitely do a better job out of it!" The mise-en-scènes are illogical, consisting in people who come together to speak, speak, speak, in logorrheic polylogues totally fake and empty of any meaning. The acting level is the same of a gymnasium theater play - which is even worse, since many of the actors are really good! But the inept directing makes them behave ridiculously false and unrealistic.
The only acceptable sides are the cinematography of Gabriel Kossuth and the sets of Dodu Balasoiu - unfortunately, not by far enough to justify this visual horror... Can you believe that, when I left the theater, I was feeling a physical malaise...? The show is positively dangerous for health, it creates digestive and neurotic adverse reactions, and it should be forbidden even for this reason only.
Legiunea straina (2008)
Incredibly unprofessional
This movie can be labeled as a study case. It's not just the fact that it denotes an unhealthy and non-artistic lust for anything that might be termed as caco-imagery. The author lives with the impression that his sanctimonious revolt against some generic and childishly termed social ills ("Moldavia is the most pauper region of Europe", "I don't believe one iota in the birds flu", "Romanian people steal because they are poor; Europeans steal because they are thieves") are more or less close to a responsible moral and artistic attitude - but he is sorely off-target!
What Daneliuc doesn't know, is that it's not enough to pose as a righteous person - you also need a modicum of professionalism, talent and intelligence to transpose this stance into an artistic product. Fatefully, "The Foreign Legion" shows as much acumen as a family video with Uncle Gogu drunkenly wetting himself in front of the guests. The script is chaotic and incoherent, randomly bustling together sundry half-subjects, in an illiterate attempt to suggest some kind of a story. The direction is pathetically dilettante - the so-called "director" is unable to build up at least a mediocre mise-en-scene, his shots are annoyingly awkward, and any sense of storytelling shines by total absence. (Of course, any comment is forced to stop at this level; it would be ridiculous to mention concepts as "cinematographic language", "means of expression" or "style"). The acting is positively "Cântarea României" ("Romania's Chant") level, with the exception of... paradoxically, the soccer goal-keeper Necula Raducanu, who is very natural, and Nicodim Ungureanu. Oana Piecnita seems to have a genuine freshness, but she is compromised by the amateurish directions given by Daneliuc.
The most serious side of this offense to decent cinema is the fact that the production received a hefty financing from the national budget, via C.N.C. (the National Cinematography Council). The fact that long-time-dead old dinosaurs like Daneliuc are still thirsty for the government udder is understandable (in a market-driven economy, they would be instantly eliminated through natural selection). But the corruption of the so-called "jury" that squanders the country's money on such ridiculously scabrous non-art, non-cinema and non-culture belongs to the criminal field.