Compassionate and detailed study of the final hours of the eponymous lonely inebriate. The two and a half hours of hand-held camera irritated me from time to time, but the performances, especially the central duo - Ion Fiscuteanu as Lazarescu, Luminata Gherghiu as the unfortunate nurse who calls to treat him - pulled me back in without much trouble. There's also a basic mismatch between the documentary style and the thuddingly fictional stumbling blocks that happen along the way, but in the end the galaxy of humanity on display, and the bitter truth that this is, mostly, how we end up, gives this film a strange dignity. I say strange, because it achieves this dignity even though it depicts a character's protracted decline from an already low point. "King Lear" it obviously isn't, nor does it set out to be, but there is something Shakespearean here in the observation of a wide range of types, as well as a deep understanding of the human condition.
Review of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
