12:08: East of Bucharest

This Romanian film was originally titled, "A fost sau n-a fost?" (roughly translated [which is to say, on Google translator] "Was or was not?"). A television show host decides to revisit on his show the Romanian revolution of 16 years earlier (1989), asking whether or not there was a revolution in their small town (or whether the people simply gathered in the square to celebrate after people revolted in Bucharest). Because he can't find anyone else, he invites a lonely old man and a high school teacher who is also a drunk.

The movie has a good bit of sadness in it (the drunkenness and loneliness and the school children, who are constantly setting off firecrackers to scare people and cause trouble). But there's also a good dose of unexpected humor: the two men chosen to be on the tv show are clearly unsuited--the old man sits there, folding paper into little paper boats, the drunkard brings along a bottle of alcohol to calm his nerves.

I'm sure my enjoyment of this film was encouraged by the fact that I like Eastern Europe a whole lot. But the film is also thoughtful--at the bottom, the question is whether or not it's helpful to remember and scientifically examine what went on during the revolution. It seems that the drunk, the high school teacher, is fabricating a story that he revolted first. People call in on the phone to object to his story. One supporter of the Romanian government seeks to downplay his support for the Romanian government of 16 years before. The tv show host wants to forget that he used to work in textiles. At the end of the film, in a somewhat overly poignant scene, the camera films the snow and sees its ability to cover over and hide everything to be the best approach to the past. It hints that asking too many questions might be a problem.

There is a sub-theme of friendship. The drunk repeatedly insults a Chinese businessman in the city when he's drunk. When he is sober, he apologizes and is forgiven. Toward the end, the Chinese man calls in to defend the drunk's character. The tv show host himself then attacks the Chinese man in an ugly rejection of the foreigner qua foreigner. The old man also looks for friendship. He poignantly recalls his relationship with his wife in his time on tv. He goes out of his way to serve as Santa Claus for the town. It is the tv show host who cannot understand friendship--he is obsessed with himself, mistreating his mother and his mistress, putting his silly, poorly produced tv show above everything else.

In addition to its overt question of whether or not the revolution happened in their town, the film implicitly asks whether the revolution in Romania changed anything. It asks whether people uniting in squares across Romania and coming together against their government fundamentally changed the way that the people in Romania related to one another. It seems like it didn't--the people are still isolated and lonely, with little bits of friendship occasionally surprising them. A New York Times reviewer writes about the political message of the film:

The desultory, deflated mood that pervades the film is also its main satirical point. As an ideology, Communism promised not only a better model of society, but also a whole new kind of person. The revolutions that punctured this fantasy thus represented, at least in part, a triumph of the same old thing, the revenge of a flawed, stumbling, anti-utopian conception of humanity against a totalitarian perfectionism.

In answer to Mr. Jderescu's question, then, Mr. Porumboiu's film suggests that there was no revolution because the dull, basic facts of human life, as incarnated by the deadpan Beckettian comedy of Jderescu, Piscoci and Manescu, resist dramatic change.

While this view may seem cynical, it also proves to be tolerant and generous. By the end of the day, as the streetlights flicker to life in Vaslui, the grandiose talk of heroism and cowardice fades into a quieter understanding, at once bleak and consoling. History is made, or at least endured, by the humble and the foolish as well as the brave.

One thing that I really liked about 12:08: everything ties together. At the beginning, the film traces the lives of three different characters. It seems like it might be one of those movies with a hundred different vignettes pasted together. But it isn't. The three characters connect and almost all of the pieces of the film fit together.


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