Sorry for how late this week’s newsletter is! Amazing what happens when some big assignments and a big family milestone happens. Hope you’ll understand my prioritization. There will be a makeup edition later, I promise!
Did you know some of the most exciting cinema coming out of Europe is not from France, not from Italy, but from … Romania?!
In the wake of the country’s freedom from Communism with the fall of the USSR, Romanian artists began processing their nation’s history and the wounds from it they carried into the present. The resulting movement known as the Romanian New Wave, beginning around 2002 and exploding from the mid-aughts to early-teens, is one of the most aesthetically invigorating and narratively provocative national bodies of work I’ve encountered.
The TL;DR on the Romanian New Wave for those who need more than a paragraph:
And if you’ve got five minutes or so, here’s a scholarly explanation that goes a bit longer:
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Cristian Mungiu, a leading figure in the Romanian New Wave whose Palme d’Or win for 2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days put the movement on the map. His latest film R.M.N. (out now in select theaters) is a true brain scan of his country as it buckles under the forces of globalization, although he was quick to say that he makes movies he thinks are universal — he just makes them in a place where he knows all the details and nuances so it can feel like real life.
But if you want even more information about this cinematic hotspot, I’ve assembled a list of ten films below that will take you on an international journey without leaving your couch. Some films are from the prime of the New Wave, while others are more recent works building on the momentum and recognition of those early works. Taken together, it’s a riveting national corpus worth watching and analyzing.
Radu Jude, Aferim!
If all this talk of global cinema sounds esoteric, then let the offbeat humor of Aferim! convince you otherwise. Radu Jude’s piquant picaresque is a blisteringly funny tour of the Romanian countryside in the early 1800s, presaging some of the ethnic and class tensions that still exist. This no-holds-barred look at the brutality of exercising power and ownership feels entirely emboldened to offend anyone without punching down, a rare and difficult feat to achieve.
Aferim! is available to rent from various digital providers.
Bogdan Mirică, Dogs
It’s riveting to see the genre framework of the American Western mapped onto the desolate Eastern Romanian countryside near the Ukrainian border. But Bogdan Mirică finds effortless transposition of themes in Dogs, a plaintive Western in the vein of No Country for Old Men. The young Roman inherits land he doesn’t want and begins trying to offload it only to encounter fierce pushback from the violently inclined company of his relatives. He soon finds that, like his country at large, wiping the slate clean of a blood and brutal past is easier said than done.
Dogs is available to rent from various digital providers.
Cătălin Mitulescu, The Way I Spent the End of the World
A fun family story told through the eyes of two children, The Way I Spent the End of the World provides a point of view on the waning days of Communist leader Ceaucescu similar to that experienced burgeoning by the Romanian New Wave directors. Teenage Eva thinks she can escape the country’s oppressiveness by fleeing, while tyke Lilu thinks he can just assassinate the country’s autocrat when he’s performing in front of him during a choral competition. It’s a ground-level view of a political earthquake in Romania that proves disarming as it is dynamite.
The Way I Spent the End of the World is available for free with ads on Tubi.
Cristian Mungiu, Beyond the Hills
Beyond the Hills “speak[s] about what is evil in the world today and how you can distinguish good from bad,” as Mungiu told me last month. “You can imagine that [the characters think] they’re doing a lot of very good things and, still, that’s very relative.” Mungiu once again works from the clay of a real-life story, loosely adapting a work of journalism that exposed the abuse of a young woman at an Orthodox convent. What’s worse is that she’s the kind of person who could most use their help and instead earns their scorn. This film spurns any attempts at easy moralizing and messaging to present a complicated version of what people will do in the name of faith and institutions. I rewatched this prior to my interview and am still thinking about how perfectly this movie ends.
Beyond the Hills is available on the Criterion Channel.
Radu Muntean, Summer Holiday
Summer Holiday is a great example of when “for the boys” goes wrong. While on holiday with his wife and child, Bogdan runs into his old running buddies and peels off for a night of debauchery. What ensues is neither cautionary or morality tale but a complex emotional investigation by director Radu Muntean of what happens to the wildest parts of ourselves when we prematurely put them to bed.
Summer Holiday is available to rent from various digital providers.
Alexander Nanau, Collective
The newest film on this list is Collective, Alexander Nanau’s documentary chronicling the ripple effects of the 2015 Colectiv night club fire that killed 64 people in Bucharest. The tragedy takes on additional gravity when you contextualize it in a history of bureaucratic neglect and the cynicism it breeds. The film is a clear-eyed look at how the forces who work for good try to move Romania through its pain and toward accountability … while also keeping an eye on those who attempt to exploit the flashpoint for division and personal gain.
Collective is available on Hulu.
Paul Negoescu, Two Lottery Tickets
“Romanians are bad at making movies,” says a droll sidekick in Two Lottery Tickets. “We have such a beautiful country, but they only show doom and gloom … they don’t capture the essence of our country.” Paul Negoescu’s deadpan comedy is plenty aware of the recent cinematic legacy in which it follows. But he finds his own way to both honor and send that up in an adventure that akin to The Hangover played as purely pathetic. What this down-and-out wolfpack sees of their country in search of lost winning lottery tickets provides the same level of commentary as the sober-minded films its characters purpots to hate.
Two Lottery Tickets is available for free with ads on Tubi.
Cristian Nemescu, California Dreamin’
The tale of Cristian Nemescu is a tragic one, for he died at age 27 before his debut feature California Dreamin’ could be completed. The edit, as explained in opening title cards, is left at where it was at the time of his death. At 155 minutes, it can feel a bit unwieldy and sloppy. But there’s a lot of really odd, unexpected moments contained in this comedy about American-led NATO forces held captive in Romania by a corrupt rail boss. All the unexpected cultural exchange that ensues is the stuff of great cinema. It makes me sad for all the movies Nemescu never got to make.
California Dreamin’ is available to rent from various digital platforms.
Corneliu Porumboiu, Police, Adjective
Among his countrymen behind the camera, Corneliu Porumboiu finds the most satisfying blend of intellectual heft and cinematic style. I enjoyed interviewing him about The Whistlers back in 2019, but my favorite movie of his remains the unconventional procedural Police, Adjective. You might think a movie that ends with a discussion around the semoitics of the word “police” sounds like watching paint dry, but Porumboiu finds a way to make a detailed discussion of what policing really means engaging and incisive.
Police, Adjective is available for free with ads on Tubi.
Cristi Puiu, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
The first director to really put the Romanian New Wave on the map was Cristi Puiu, who was the first to crack the Cannes competition. His high water mark remains the pitch-black dark comedy The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, an elongated tale of a Romanian man trying to get the medical care he needs. Puiu’s insistent on practically making you feel his pain through the night from hell that exposes the bureaucratic rot of the state. If ever there were a movie to put the “dead” in “deadpan,” it’d be this one.
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is available for free with ads on Vudu.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
Some great primers on the writers’ strike, arranged from least to most in-the-weeds in their perspective. (I am, unsurprisingly, unabashedly pro-writers in this conflict.)
More writers’ strike content, this time in long-form from Vanity Fair.
There are a lot of doomer takes out there, especially from writers in their negotiations process, about the dangers of AI. Here are stories about two directors who surprisingly don’t buy into it: Baz Luhrmann and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
If you care about indie movies, you should be paying attention to what’s happening with the leadership shakeup at IFC Films as reported by IndieWire.
While this is “Marshall and the Movies,” after all, I do occasionally tip over into television coverage. I’ve reviewed each season of Hulu’s The Great for The Playlist, and it’s been fun to chart the evolution of the show as it happens. Season 3 is perhaps its most assured yet and features really dynamic turns by leads Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult.
For Decider, I said stream it to Both Sides of the Blade and Blood (on Hulu).
Paid subscribers got to read my full reflection on Young Adult that went out last week:
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
Some Cannes talk next week!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall