August 2006Issue 392



The Death of Mr Lazarescu

directed by Cristi Puiu

Product information
Catalog #: TVD2017
Star rating
****

The Death of Mr Lazarescu

Wow – we know what happens in the end; it’s about the last hours in the life of a lonely boozy widower; and it’s over two-and a-half hours long, with long stretches in real time. Maybe that doesn’t sound appealing. Surprisingly, though, it’s often funny, never less than absorbing, and it stays with you. Its impact is glancing, gradual, accumulative as Mr Lazarescu encounters people to whom he’s either peripheral, such as his neighbours, or who meet him professionally – ambulance workers, administrators and medical staff.

Of course, everyone is different – one person more understanding, another kinder, more tolerant, another livelier, more cheery, or funnier. Yet, though everyone does their job to the letter, to no-one does Mr Lazarescu really matter. Procedure and professionalism rule, but no-one connects. A sobering, trenchant, compelling film.




also by...
THIS AUTHOR

Fast Food Nation
Customers, workers and animals suffer.

Bamako

Ghosts

Apocalypto

Language Tools
Powered by Ultralingua

Join over 30,000 people just like you. Get e-mail updates about new content, action alerts, contests, and more!

other articles
FROM THIS ISSUE

One laptop at a time?
A small but powerful $100 laptop designed for school children in the Majority World.

Bolivian land returned to the people
Two million hectares have been earmarked for women and indigenous peoples.

Paradise Regained
Chagos islanders resist superpowers

The trouble with models
View from Lagos by Ike Oguine

The privatization of Patagonia
Fences are marching across the Patagonian wilderness, displacing indigenous peoples and turning pure water into private property. Tomás Bril Mascarenhas reports on another conquest, this time by foreign investors.

recently
IN THIS COLUMN

Fish Tank
A film that gets inside the mind and feelings of a young person deeply at odds with the world. Written and directed by Andrea Arnold.

Birdwatchers
The reality of indigenous life in the Amazon. Directed and co-written by Marco Bechis

Three Miles North of Molkom
At a new age festival in Sweden, a group of people who’ve never met before explore tree-hugging, sweat lodges, shamanism, tantric sex.

Sin Nombre
A road movie cum Western. Or, rather, it's a railroad movie and the 'West' - where innumerable migrants are headed on railroad wagons - is more accurately the 'North', the US.

Burma VJ – reporting from a closed country
This is the story of ‘Joshua’, an underground video journalist. By Anders Ostergaard






Voices from the margins:

Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.


Subscribe to NI now!