paul on spout.com

Under discussion:

The Rest is Silence (Restul e Tacere)  (2007)

The biggest budget movie ever made in Romanian history played for free at Telluride 2008 today. Nae Caranfil is the central figure of the current Romanian film renaissance (they call him “The Dean”). The Rest is Silence is a period piece loosely based on the true story of Grigore “Grig” Brezianu’s determination to create of the first epic Romanian movie and establish cinema as an art form. The War of Independence (1912) is about the Romanians war with the Turks, made about 35 years after the fact. According to Caranafil, the monarch at the time offered Grig 80,000 soldiers for his production.

It’s Bucharest in 1911. Live theater reigns supreme and movies are just shy of an opiate appealing to base instincts and keeping lower class citizens out of live theater houses. Drama schools only enroll those who can best impersonate the nation’s “heroes of history.” Grig (Marius Florea Vizante) is a 25 year old movie director whose theater actor father is ashamed of him. The big french studio, Gaumonde, has set up a shop in Romania and catches wind of Grig’s “film libretto” about Romania’s war of independence. The famed actor Belcea was Grig’s only advocate and shot at making the movie, but he’s dead and Gaumonde wants to steal the story. Grig runs to get the help of Leon Negrescu (Ovidiu Niculescu), an eccentric tycoon who believes God mandated him to bring arts and sciences to Romania (he wears a toga and conducts art classes). But first Grig has to convince Leon that film is worthy of his patronage.

It’s the first of several hysterical hurdles Grig faces to get his movie made. He wears the hats of both swindler–when he needs money–and moralist–when he needs control. Along the way, an aspiring actress, Emilia (Mirela Zeta) captures his heart, but her ruthless ambitions threaten to break him. By casting Marius Florea Vizante as Grig (think a young, Romanian Paul Giamatti) Caranfil finds the perfect fresh-faced optimist whose naive enough to know when he’s right. But as much as Silence is a story of Grigg sprinting the gauntlet to get his film made, it’s about how movies rose from humble beginnings to greatness and the sacrifices–or casualties–made along the way.

It’s somehow pitch perfect that in this story where film is the underdog, Nae Caranfil wrote and directed it in classic Hollywood style. It has the rapid-fire charm and wit of movies like His Girl Friday, the visual eye-candy of the turn of the century sets from The Godfather II and a tightly wound script where each element must lead to the next.

In fact, watching The Rest is Silence is kind of a bitter sweet pill. It’s just so enjoyable and such a respectful homage to Romania’s first major filmmaker, that it’s a little mournful the U.S. can’t tout such a film as the most expensive made in our history. And to add insult to injury, Silence’s budget was 2.6 million euros (somewhere around four million dollars). No wonder Romania is experiencing a renaissance when they’re smarter with four million dollars than Hollywood is with 100 million.

Under discussion:

Bread Day (Khlebny Dyen)  (2000)

Highway  (1999)

In The Dark  (2004)

Tulpan  (2008)

Telluride is celebrating a great talent coming out of Kazakhstan this year, Sergei Dvortsevoy. Although he’s here with only his first feature film (which, incidentally, took four years to make), there’s a slate of documentaries he’s brought that the festival directors tout as “must sees.” In the Q&A for his first feature film, Tulpan, Dvortsevoy described shooting the first scene of the movie, a 10 minute long take of a ewe giving birth. He showed it to his small cast of Kazakh actors and non-actors and said, “That’s what we have to live up to.” And it’s true. If there were a Best Non-human Actor Oscar, this sheep would have it (although the Academy would probably give it to one of these damn Disney chihuahuas). Fortunately, the cast lived up to the animal’s authenticity with each scene and breathed life into a simple fable.

Asa is a young man living with his sister’s family after a stint in the navy. They’re nomadic sheep herders and Asa works for his older brother in law, Ondas. He’s anxious to start his adult life and for him it will begin with marrying Tulpan, the title character. But neither Tulpan nor her parents are interested in the arrangement. Asa’s not established himself as a herdsman. He begs his brother-in-law for a herd, but he can’t get a herd until he’s married. Therein lies Asa’s dilemma he must face to go from boy to man. But it’s Dvortsevoy’s meticulous direction that creates a cinematic experience.

It’s not just the performances that are enamoring, it’s the sheer starkness of the environment. You see, Tulpan is not just the only girl for Asa. She’s literally the only girl, which sounds ridiculous until you see the Hunger Steppe of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country on the planet, and the steppe is a vast, flat sea of dust. From the family’s yurt–a tent that looks like a giant wicker basket turned upside down and covered in wool blankets–there’s 360 degrees of flat horizon and nothing to break it. Not even a telephone pole. A constant wind buffets the earth and its droll is only broken by the sharp cries of one of Ondas’ children, his sheep or the engine of a tractor-turned-truck driven by a porn loving courier, Asa’s only outside friend.

The isolation is unnerving, but it also clarifies the inherent drama of this family. There’s no need for Dvortsevoy to impress us with symbolism. The reality is the metaphor. For Ondas, when he can save a lamb, he insures his children’s survival. Dvortsevoy’s long, uninterrupted takes pull up the quiet angst of their life. We don’t have to hear Ondas say, “Life as a herdsman is really hard,” because it’s a fact we become intimate with. So, in Tulpan when it’s time for a sheep to give birth, we’re right there, hanging on every moment. And that sense of The Other that Sasha Baron Coen used to make his Kazakh character Borat so funny, is nowhere to be found.

(Sergei Dvortsevoy’s documentaries are also playing at Telluride’s Backlot: Paradise, Highway, Bread Day and In the Dark.)