Which filmmaker would dare to make a two-and-a-half hour drama – almost in real-time – about a dying man’s last voyage from hospital to hospital and not only get away with it but deliver one of the best films of the year? The rather unexpected answer is Romanian director Cristi Puiu, whose Moartea domnului Lăzărescu (The Death of Mr Lazarescu) is an equally enthralling and depressing ride about the absence of love and respect between human beings even in one’s last hours on earth.

 

The titular Mr Lăzărescu Dante Rhemus (Ioan Fiscuteanu) is taken on an odyssey from his dingy Bucharest apartment to various hospitals when he starts to feel really ill – though every member of the medical corpse he encounters seems to have a different opinion on what exacty is wrong with him. Being constantly ridiculed for having alcohol on his breath, Mr Lăzărescu is sent from one hospital to another because of capacity problems (there has been a grave traffic accident at the same time) and seeming indifference about his fate, except from the ambulance nurse Mioara (Luminta Gheorghiu) who watches over him while he lapses in- and out of consciousness.       

 

The camera-work is mostly handheld and almost dogme-like gloomy, which feels appropriate for a ride which increasingly feels like a descent not only into certain death but especially into a prolonged Dantesque purgatory that precedes it; a purgatory made up of how the real world deals with a dying old drunkard: with indifference. The film’s central conceit lies in its use of its almost real-time duration, which is drawn out into an agonising wait for that final moment. A daring move by Puiu and co-screenwriter Razvan Radulescu because such a tactic could have easily made the film a two-hour-plus bore. With the help of all-around excellent performances and Puiu’s masterful direction however, this film draws one in from second one and does not let go until the end. Not the easiest film of the year, but certainly among the best.

 

 

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