Review of 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006) by V H — 02 Sep 2007

[color=black][font=Tahoma]It's a few days before Christmas in a small, grimy, unnamed town in Romania. The kids are all running around setting off firecrackers indoors -- perhaps this is some quaint old Romanian tradition designed to cull the weak-hearted from the gift lists. A lonely, white-haired widower who everyone calls "old man Piscoci" has just agreed to reprise his role as Santa Claus to cover for a last-minute cancellation. An alcoholic history teacher named Manescu struggles to pay off the many people he's borrowed money from. And Jderesku, the owner of the local television station, tries to line up guests to appear on his talk show that evening. The topic: "Was there or was there not a revolution in their town sixteen years earlier?"[/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]After a couple of his invited panelists back out, Jderesku recruits Piscoci and Manescu to replace them and personally drives them to the station to assure their prompt arrival. The studio is very basic -- just a table with three chairs in front of a mural of the town square. Filming is done by a single inexperienced cameraman who seems unclear on the purpose of the zoom function.[/font][/color].

[font=Arial][color=black][font=Tahoma]Everything I know about the Romanian revolution and the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, I learned about five minutes ago by reading Wikipedia, something I wish I'd thought to do [i]before[/i] seeing this movie. Apparently, after several days of demonstrations throughout the country, Ceausescu and his wife fled Bucharest in a helicopter on December 22, 1989 at precisely 12:08 PM, and were executed three days later. What Jderesku wants to know is if there were there any demonstrations in his town before 12:08 PM on the day of Ceausescu's overthrow, or did people just start streaming into the town square after Ceausescu was safely deposed. [/font][/color][/font].

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[font=Arial][color=black][font=Tahoma]It seems a rather odd point to be quibbling about, especially sixteen years after the fact. Manescu insists that he and two others stormed a government building and began demonstrating right around noon on the day in question. A series of callers to the program dispute this. Piscoci, who spends most of the show making paper boats, admits that he didn't join the crowd in the square until after the revolution (assuming there was one) had turned into a celebration.[/font][/color][/font].

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[font=Arial][color=black][font=Tahoma]In case you can't tell by this description, [i]12:08 East of Bucharest[/i] is classified as a comedy. Though doddering old Piscoci is clearly meant to be a comic character, the only real joke is that he's old and oblivious to the camera. Though there's a smattering of whimsy throughout -- Piscoci convinces Jderesku to stop on the way to the studio so that he can buy a Christmas tree -- most of the film seemed dead serious to me. I'm not sure what possible difference it makes if the town in question staged a 3-man, 8-minute mini-revolution or none at all, but Jderesku is determined to get to the bottom of it. [/font][/color][/font].

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[font=Arial][color=black][font=Tahoma]What I enjoyed most about this movie were the scenes of the gritty town, which doesn't appear to have benefited much from the revolution, or lack thereof. One of the characters complains that even when it snows, the beauty just dissolves into mud a day later. I doubt that this is sort of image that the Romanian tourist office would like to present, but for some reason it made me want to go there. [/font][/color][/font].

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[font=Arial][color=black][font=Tahoma]Though it held my interest throughout, this film was more of a curiosity for me than anything else. I guess I just don't really get Romanian humor. [/font][/color][/font].