Watch The Death of Mr. Lazarescu For Free

Too much of everything

Strong and Moving!

A Disappointing Continuation

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This movie took awhile to get going. I was worried for several long minutes that I'd wasted my time and money renting it. Eventually, I got totally wrapped up in Mr. Lazarescu and his troubles and his helpers. It's a sad story about an alcoholic who is shunted from hospital to hospital with a seemingly minor problem. It's not that the health care workers don't care; the ambulance crew clearly does. It's just a lot of overburdened workers with problems of their own. The movie is done as if it were a documentary or reality TV show, and you really lose yourself in the story.SPOILERS:It's an absorbing movie, and the end is somewhat ambiguous. The version I saw had a key scene truncated to that it's not clear that he died. The scene was cut, but the sound was left in, so you're left with a black screen. The missing visual is the camera retreating from the view of Mr. Lazarescu's back - we're left seeing his body on the bed.

A near-three hour film about the lonely death of a cantankerous old drunk, and the failings of the Romanian health service, may not sound much like fun. But 'The Death of Mr. Lazarescu' has been called a black comedy, and, although that's pushing it (the comedy is really very dark indeed), superb naturalistic acting infuses this sad tale with a real emotional kick. Some of what we see bears resemblance to the themes of U.S. police show 'The Wire'; that a key part of the job of underfunded public servants is denying access to the service that is nominally being provided; and how those who work in such a system dehumanise themselves in order to survive. But thanks to the brilliant performances on offer here, we also see faint glimmers of surviving decency in almost all of even the superficially wost of those Mr. Lazarescu is unfortunate enough to encounter on his last journey. For those of us who live in richer countries than Romania, we may have reason to hope that our own ends are not quite so grim; but this is a universal story, powerfully told.

Other comments cover the story well, so I'll focus on the documentary aspect of this complex film - not complex in story but complex in idea.On the positive side: it is quite remarkable film-making to create an acted film which feels "real" most of the time and as if one is watching a cinema verite documentary on one man's trip through the health care system. The film feels closest to Frederick Wiseman's brilliant (and 6-hour long) documentary "Near Death," with a few transfusions from another medical documentary of his, "Hospital." Why not just do a straight documentary? Acting a scripted story enables the filmmaker (who says in an interview that he admires Wiseman) to make more concise points (with some stereotypical character portrayals) about the way people access an overburdened health care system, how disreputable patients are treated by medical personnel (in the US, GOMER's - "Get Out of My Emergency Room"), and about the human tragedy of dying alone in fear and pain (which happens quite often in the US - see the "SUPPORT" study of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). In its realism in depicting these features of health care with actors and a script, and somewhat unsteady hand-held camera with long takes, "Lazarescu" is quite an achievement in cinema.On the negative side: It is not and IMHO should not be an enjoyable film to watch, though I found it absorbing in the same way that Wiseman's films are absorbing (no accident, I assume). I am utterly baffled by the quotes on the DVD box: "hilarious" . . . "acclaimed comedy" or the subtitle "a black comedy with serious side effects." Baloney. I found absolutely nothing funny about this film, unless one considers modern industrial health care systems as a whole a kind of black comedy or bad joke. Perhaps my reaction is because I'm a medical sociologist with expertise on documentary film portrayal of dying and death (really!), and have seen and analyzed the majority of actual documentaries on the subject (close to 100). This film is quite realistic about most aspects of health care that it weighs in on (whether in Romania OR the U.S.), presumably by the director's intent. I could have shown it to one of my classes as a "documentary" and few would have been the wiser, quite a compliment to the director.Perhaps after seeing this film we might be moved to demand better health care, more medical resources, or more compassion toward sick old men dying alone in pain in the middle of the night, but a "comedy"? To see what's here as a comedy is to lose a part of our humanity.

The Death of Mr Lazarescu is a film that challenges. It is long. 153 minutes long. It has the weighty subject matter that the title suggests. A man of 63 who lives alone with his 3 cats and the comfort of his home made booze is taken from hospital to hospital where busy doctors use the little power they have to make sure they are not responsible for his care. I had expected it to be about alienation and a poor society with a poverty of care. But what was striking was the opposite. One must fear for the Romanians about to become part of the Mighty European Union. This man lives in dowdy circumstances; his home reminded me of my childhood home with tacky plastic table cloths and bland wall tiles. Even the cats are indifferent to him. But there were neighbours; they go into each other's homes; they offer food; they argue over the best course of help. The Nurse who takes him from Hospital to Hospital shows real caring and sees beyond the smell of alcohol that creates the first pre-judgement for everyone. Those rivalries between the different medical professions is universal I'd assume. I found this a tough film to watch. If you've sat with someone dying you'll know how hard it is. The only thing I did wonder throughout was why someone who has had a headache for days would wear a woolly hat in bed?