On DVD: 12:08 East of Bucharest

Written and Directed By: Corneliu Porumbou

Starring: Mircea Andreescu, Teodor Corban, Ion Sapdaru

Tartan Video brings us Porumbou’s first film which deals with the anniversary of the Romanian Revolution. 12:08 East of Bucharest is so subtly humorous that I almost couldn’t tell how funny it was.

The Movie

The time in the film’s American title (in Romania it is A fost sau n-a fost? Or Was There or Wasn’t There?) is the moment on December 22^nd 1989 that Romanians saw dictator Nicolae Ceausescu board a plane and leave the capitol, thus marking the end of Communist rule.  This occurred after people took to the streets in protest, first in Bucharest then elsewhere in Romania. Sixteen years later, on the anniversary of the event, small town talk show host Virgil Jderescu (Teodor Corban) brings two guests onto his show to discuss whether or not there was a revolution in their community, or if they merely celebrated everything after the fact.

The first thirty minutes of this film follows Jderescu’s two guests - History teacher/town drunk Tiberiu Manescu (Ion Sapdaru) and Emanoil Piscoci (Mircea Andreescu), often addressed as Old Man Piscoci according to the subtitles of the film. We watch as Piscoci deals with inadequate Santa costumes and gets revenge on firecracker-happy hooligans. Director Porumbou admits Piscoci is the most developed character in the film, but we don’t see much of that until much later in the film. Andreescu gives the best performance of the movie, endearing us with little details like making paper boats to show he’s clearly bored with the events going on during the show. Manescu has his dryly humorous moments before the interviews take place, as we see him being threatened by his justly untrusting wife, handing out his entire paycheck to everyone who has bought him a drink in the last two weeks and apologizing, again, to the local Chinese man for insults he does not even remember making.

The interview consists primarily of hung-over Manescu claiming that he and three others (who are now conveniently either dead or in Canada) were in the streets protesting and being beaten the morning that communism fell while several callers, including one of the men that allegedly beat him, claims that they were never there that day. Sapdaru plays the character with very little range, but this suits the role perfectly. We have no trouble believing that Manescu cannot wait for the hour to be over so that he can get to the nearest bar. Are his repeated claims that he is a local hero supposed to be humorous? Are his numerous retractors? His apologies to the Chinese gentleman who later tries to help him? Sometimes dry humor can be more dry than humorous and I was often made uncomfortable by Manescu’s predicament.

5/10

The Video

The color may have been slightly faded, but otherwise the picture was as clear as can be expected. The film gives a good sense of what a gloomy winter in Romania is probably like. Some footage is shot outdoors but the majority is in a single room at the television studio and, at times, I really felt like I was watching on public television. The subtitles were always very easy to read.

7/10

The Audio

The Dolby audio is very clear but I was dependant on the subtitles to understand anything. There is no music soundtrack during the film. I never had to adjust the volume during the viewing.

7/10

The Packaging and Bonus Features

The film included commentary by Porumbou where he discusses the use of light as a theme throughout the film and how he was inspired to make the film by a similar program he watched on the 10^th anniversary of the revolution. There are several trailers to other Tartan DVDs, a trailer for this film and the options for English or Spanish subtitles.

The front cover of the sturdy amaray case is very eye-catching for a comedy. We see the character Manescu dragging a lit Christmas tree across a red field while, in the foreground, there is a broken Sickle and Hammer (Serp i Molot). The back has a few small photos from the film, and a large photograph of the three men during the television show.                          

6/10

I’m going to do something that film reviewers never do – admit to the possibility that I may be wrong. I read other reviews of this film and saw phrases like ‘Hilarious’ and ‘Uproaring Funny’ and ‘Faultless Comic Timing’ used generously. To me, the film was lost somewhere between the humorous and the dramatic, staying too far from either group to be of interest. Perhaps I was the wrong person to review this one. It was like giving a delicious fish dinner to someone who doesn’t care for fish. I don’t know what this was, but I didn’t like it. In the end, I felt sad; sad for Manescu, sad for these people who doesn’t care about their revolution and maybe not about each other. As the Chinaman says when he calls into the show ‘I don’t like how you Romanians treat each other’. In the end, neither did I, and I didn’t see anything funny about it.

Overall (Not an Average) 5/10

The Review

The Movie 5/10

The Video 7/10

The Audio 7/10

The Packaging and Bonus Features 7/10

Overall (Not an Average) 6/10

-Fred Grimm