The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Written and directed by Cristi Puiu
Tartan
2006
Rating:


The name of Dante Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu), the titular character in former painter Cristi Puiu's Romanian "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," is at once allegorical and ironic. After being picked up by an ambulance for a headache and vomiting that might stem from a decade-old ulcer operation, Mr. Lazarescu enters five circles of Hell, here represented by five uncaring hospitals. Unfortunately for Mr. Lazarescu, there's no one to roll back the stone and heal him.

Mr. Lazarescu's symptoms don't initially seem life threatening. He spends the first 45 minutes of the film wandering around his apartment, feeding his cats, arguing with his brother-in-law over the phone and occasionally vomiting. When an ambulance doesn't arrive after he twice calls for one, Mr. Lazarescu turns to his neighbors for medicine. The couple is annoyed by him interrupting their quince jelly making and they're convinced he's merely drunk, but they're compassionate enough to sit with him and feed him moussaka. However, they don't care enough to accompany him to the hospital.

Paramedic and Virgil stand-in Mioara Avram (Luminita Gheorghiu) is the one who takes Mr. Lazarescu into Hell. Mr. Lazarescu is passed from one contemptuous doctor to the next who, like his neighbors, are convinced he has been drinking too much and treat his presence as an inconvenience. Mr. Lazarescu's increasing dehumanization at the hands of the doctors is paralleled by his steadily declining health.

Puiu favors long takes to portray his social naturalism, and with his feature debut he's worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Chantal Akerman, the director of 1976's "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles." The veritι style also makes "Mr. Lazarescu" reminiscent of Frederick Wiseman's 1970 documentary "Hospital." Puiu has a gift for acute observation and intense naturalism. The early scenes of Mr. Lazarescu in his apartment could be happening in any one-bedroom in the world at any given moment. In the hospitals, Puiu strips away the high-octane artifice of "ER" for a carefully choreographed mundanity that contains a subtext of social commentary beyond the singular plight of Mr. Lazarescu. A self-professed hypochondriac intimately familiar with the Romanian medical system, Puiu is merciless in his depiction of Bucharest hospitals.

Puiu intends this to be the first in a series of films collectively called "Six Stories from the Bucharest Suburbs." It may be too much and too early to hope that Puiu is the new Krzysztof Kieslowski (the ten-part "The Decalogue" and the "Three Colors" trilogy), but "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" provides enough reason to believe he's on the verge of joining his ranks.

Posted Friday, May 26, 2006

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/death.of.mr.lazarescu