Review of California Dreamin' (2007) by Ryan K — 25 Sep 2007

Nemescu uses satirical humour in two ways: first, to show the differences between the American and Romanian approaches to war; two, to comment on Romaniaâ??s own willingness to buy into the myth of America.

In the first case we have Doiaru, a railway station chief who, for reasons slowly revealed to us throughout the film, chooses to act the role of the bureaucratic legalist, who decides to delay a train full of American soldiers indefinitely, with deliberate self-satisfaction. Captain Doug Jones, of the American army, is completely distraught about the possibility of his cargo (communication equipment at one time referred to, by the Romanians, as glorified phones) not making their strict deadline. This dichotomy is set up in a way which is intended to poke fun at the self-seriousness of the Americans, once again involved in a war which in no way concerns them, of which they have no real attachment or understanding, taking on the familiar role of world-saviours. The apparent differences in response to war marks this first type of humour, here applied, as social criticism, to the grave self-seriousness of American meddling.

In the second case we have a village of Romanians, led by an enterprising Mayor, shown as being capable of doing anything in order to get close to the American soldiers, to vicariously live through them in their previously unimagined, but for the moment fully realized, proximity to the â??land of the free.â?? And out come generations of pent-up fantasies waiting to be let out: the American flags are set up in town hall, that star-spangled tie the mayor owns finally comes to life, an oversexed reenactment of a Hammer-style Dracula performance is able to be shown to an appreciative audience, a small-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower serves its once ill-imagined tourist purposes. And of course, those with limited English quickly move up the social strata to be used by those attempting to communicate to the American soldiers. Here, Nemescu pokes fun of the lengths to which a community will go in order to hide their own culture in order to seem more American. The local boys are forgotten for the handsome soldiers and promises of being whisked off to the never-neverland of the USA.

This particular instance of American interventionism has the effect, in the film, of dividing the community, as is often the case. And the message we take from this is that while interventionism might be disastrous for the world, its horror is heightened after a lengthy period of isolationism. But that there was a period of true isolationism cannot even be rightly said, because while it is true no one came for Doiaru, as promised, when the Soviets were stripping him from the Romania he knew and loved after the Second World War, the myth of America was still sold, making its presence felt every day. We sense, from this second application of sorrowful humour, the lasting effect of intervention by way of globalization.

Only recently have I discovered that the parenthetical addendum at the end of the filmâ??s title, Endless, generated from a mistranslation (the Romanian addendum would be better translated as unfinished, indicating the fact that Nemescu was not able to cut his own film and we are presumably seeing a different film than the one the director had intended). Despite this new knowledge, I still hold to my original thought that Endless is a perfect title for the film, albeit for entirely different reasons than those intended by the term unfinished. Endless is the impact of America on our world, be it through globalization, military presence, or absence after a promised appearance, passed on from generation to generation, sheathed in hollow dreams of that imaginary place called California.