Intended as the first of six films set around the outskirts of Bucharest – no wait, come back – Cristi Puiu’s grimly humorous film, winner of Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year, puts Death right back in the movies where it belongs. It’s true that there are barely two films in a twelve month period not to touch on mortality – even Over The Hedge has William Shatner dying half a dozen times – but The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu is a proper film about death, the best since Bernard Rose’s Ivansxtc. Here, the Big D ain’t easy and it sure as hell ain’t pretty.
Our doomed titular hero is a 63-year-old widower, living alone save three mangy cats. Plainly in agony with pains in his head and stomach, he calls an ambulance and seeks assistance from his neighbours. Alas, his ordeal is only beginning. Shunted around between crowded Saturday night hospitals, he slowly succumbs to what, in Hiberno-English, are known as the last ravings. Stressed doctors, rightly identifying the old fellow as a drinker, give him hell for wasting their precious time, before somebody in the maddening bureaucratic daisy chain realises he’s on the way out. Truth is though, nobody much cares.
Waiting around hospitals for medics with little or no concept of bedside manner might sound like a slog in cinematic terms, but Mr. Puiu renders his protagonist’s plight with frustrating urgency. Many have favourably compared the director’s studious naturalistic style with the hyper-conscious documentaries of Frederick Wiseman, and sure enough, crunchingly real performances and a commendably unburdened aesthetic make it impossible to even remember that one is watching a fictionalised film. Happily, the ordeal is tempered by a sly, sad comedy that frequently recalls the work of Nanni Moretti making The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu a million times more fun than say, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Mr. Puiu has said he was inspired by his own experiences as a hypochondriac. We can only hope he never feels any better.