The death of Mr. Lazarescu

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Movie
German title The death of Mr. Lazarescu
Original title Moartea domnului Lăzărescu
Country of production Romania
original language Romanian
Publishing year 2005
length 153 minutes
Rod
Director Cristi Puiu
script Cristi Puiu
Răzvan Rădulescu
production Alexandru Munteanu
Bobby Păunescu
Anca Puiu
music Andreea Paduraru
camera Oleg Mutu
cut Dana Bunescu
occupation

The Romanian film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu ( Moartea domnului Lăzărescu ) from 2005 describes the conditions in the Romanian health care system with black humor . Directed by Cristi Puiu , who also wrote the script for the tragicomedy.

Puiu emphasized that he was not interested in criticizing the doctors who work under difficult conditions. He is more concerned with “the paradoxes of life” than with the hospitals. The trigger for the film project was a hypochondria Puius. In 2001 he became afraid of a trip to Cannes , first believed he had cancer, then muscle atrophy , searched the Internet for supposed symptoms and finally went to doctors who found nothing. The preoccupation with existential questions prompted him to write history. He saw "dying as a continuous process". For him, however, there were no definitive answers to these questions.

The film takes place in a single night and is hand-filmed. In the hospitals, Puiu could only shoot at night and suffered from insomnia during the day. The work premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005 and received the Un Certain Regard award . The film was nominated for best director and best screenplay at the European Film Awards 2005 . In Germany it did not appear on the regular cinema program. In 2007 ZDF produced a German dubbed version. Leading actor Ioan Fiscuteanu died of colon cancer two years after the film was released .

action

Mr. Lăzărescu will soon be 63 years old, is retired and lives alone in a Bucharest rented apartment. The wife died, the daughter emigrated, only his three cats keep him company. Because of a headache and stomach ache, he called the emergency services on a Saturday evening. Because he is a long time coming, he rings the doorbell of his neighbors. They notice that he has been drinking and assume that this has caused his suffering. They find his apartment untidy and dirty and bring him some food. He vomits blood.

After a while, the emergency assistant Mioara arrives while the driver stays in the car below. She initially suspects that the pain is triggered by drinking alcohol and administering glucose to the old man . After he told her about a stomach ulcer that he had fourteen years ago, she believes there is colon cancer and wants to take him to the hospital. She does not succeed in convincing the neighbors to accompany Lăzărescu; his sister promises to travel from Târgu Mureș the next day . As the night progressed, Lăzărescu often behaved difficultly. The Spitalul Sf. Spiridon is already full, also because a coach crashed on 1 that evening. The examining doctor immediately found Lăzărescu's flag, accused him of being to blame for his misery by drinking and of claiming the hospital, even though other sick people needed more attention than him. He recommends that Mioara take Lăzărescu to the Spitalul Universitar , where he can be better examined. At the university hospital, the admission first notices the patient's alcoholism, but sees the possibility of a more serious illness. Again they want to refer him to another clinic, but the intercession of a nurse enables a tomography to be performed at the last minute . The young doctor responsible for this, who turns to patients and his subordinates in a bland tone, discovers a hematoma under the skull , which must be operated on immediately. Soon, however, he will be carried away by incurable liver damage anyway. Because of the overcrowding in the university clinic, he recommends continuing to Spitalul Filaret and handing over the tomographic images. More clearly than in the other hospitals, the doctors there rebuke Mioara for not having to interfere as an assistant in the diagnosis of doctorates in medicine. The chief surgeon expects Lăzărescu to sign the usual declaration of consent for the operation. But the patient, a bit confused, does not sign. For fear of being prosecuted, the doctor refuses to operate. Mioara and the ambulance driver take him to the Bagdasar hospital , where they find overtired staff. Because Lăzărescu is now in an apathetic state, you no longer need a declaration of consent. For the first time, doctors recognize that Lăzărescu has open legs . The preparations for the operation are being made. Two nurses wash him and shave his head. Finally one of them is waiting with him.

criticism

Christoph Huber from the Austrian press warned that the material might sound “uninviting on paper [...]”. He praised the “overwhelming documentary realism”, thanks to which the numerous supporting characters appeared “absolutely real”. The length of the film evokes “the feeling of real time”. For Cinema , the film was “great humanistic cinema by a master”.

Puius Film was a "work of astonishing power and radicalism" for the film magazine Positif . He “amazes and enchants with the uniqueness of his tone: somewhere between epic narrative (the character's nocturnal wanderings) and documentary film (the description of how hospitals work).” The picture is black, wrote critic Pierre Eisenreich, but what is the irony at the same time big and subtle! “No romance whatsoever to sweeten the loss of Lazarescu; In return, an everyday, especially feminine, humanity lays a certain decency on the decay of the dying. ”In addition to the omnipresence of feminine beauty, the film offers a“ very appropriate ”picture of the machinations of Romanian men and provides examples of the culture of corruption in the country. Puius' inventory is "strict, mature and definitely honest, like his idea of ​​the death of a man."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Christoph Huber: Masterpiece of a Hypochondriac , in: Die Presse , December 21, 2005
  2. ^ Die Presse , December 17, 2007: Actor Ion Fiscuteanu has died
  3. ↑ Cinema: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu , accessed October 2, 2011
  4. ↑ Pierre Eisenreich: La mort de Dante Lazarescu. L'indésirable , in: Positif , January 2006, pp. 25–26 as well as the prefixed introduction on p. 24