The Oak (1992)
(Balanta)
Country: FR/ROM
Technical: col 105m
Director: Lucian Pintilie
Cast: Maia Morgenstern, Razvan Vasilescu
Synopsis:
Caught in the death throes of the Ceausescu regime, a schoolteacher cremates her dead father and takes off by train to the provinces, where she meets gypsies, rapists, and a hospital that symbolises everything wrong with the country, and wherein the one competent doctor seems to have the found the answer in vociferous protest.
Review:
This brutal and chaotic film refitted the spirit of the Prague spring cinema of the 1960s to the narrative formlessness of Wojciech Has's The Hourglass Sanatorium, and the noisy anarchy of Emir Kusturica. As a portrait of a country imploding it has much to commend it and takes few prisoners, tossing a dying hamster into a trashcan and using a deformed child as an index of societal morbidity. The oak tree symbol is introduced late on, and is presumably meant to represent something more timeless and dignified.
(Balanta)
Country: FR/ROM
Technical: col 105m
Director: Lucian Pintilie
Cast: Maia Morgenstern, Razvan Vasilescu
Synopsis:
Caught in the death throes of the Ceausescu regime, a schoolteacher cremates her dead father and takes off by train to the provinces, where she meets gypsies, rapists, and a hospital that symbolises everything wrong with the country, and wherein the one competent doctor seems to have the found the answer in vociferous protest.
Review:
This brutal and chaotic film refitted the spirit of the Prague spring cinema of the 1960s to the narrative formlessness of Wojciech Has's The Hourglass Sanatorium, and the noisy anarchy of Emir Kusturica. As a portrait of a country imploding it has much to commend it and takes few prisoners, tossing a dying hamster into a trashcan and using a deformed child as an index of societal morbidity. The oak tree symbol is introduced late on, and is presumably meant to represent something more timeless and dignified.
(Balanta)
Country: FR/ROM
Technical: col 105m
Director: Lucian Pintilie
Cast: Maia Morgenstern, Razvan Vasilescu
Synopsis:
Caught in the death throes of the Ceausescu regime, a schoolteacher cremates her dead father and takes off by train to the provinces, where she meets gypsies, rapists, and a hospital that symbolises everything wrong with the country, and wherein the one competent doctor seems to have the found the answer in vociferous protest.
Review:
This brutal and chaotic film refitted the spirit of the Prague spring cinema of the 1960s to the narrative formlessness of Wojciech Has's The Hourglass Sanatorium, and the noisy anarchy of Emir Kusturica. As a portrait of a country imploding it has much to commend it and takes few prisoners, tossing a dying hamster into a trashcan and using a deformed child as an index of societal morbidity. The oak tree symbol is introduced late on, and is presumably meant to represent something more timeless and dignified.