Lucian's Blog

How Did I Celebrate the End of the World
All the people who experienced communism in no matter what form will be very happy to see this film.

The director, Catalin Mitulescu, reached with this fourth film the maturity of his creation. Being a part in the new wave of Romanian directors, Mitulescu managed in this movie to bring people almost twenty years back for a reminder of their former days under communism.

Romania experienced one of the most oppressive communist regimes in Europe, first because in the '50ies and 60ies, the state was a political police state, ruled by the fear of being imprisoned and never heard of again. After the 70ies, when a more relaxed regime was put to work by Ceausescu, it came the period of "historical and greatly changes" in the life of the Romanian people. This meant a great programmed and forced migration from villages to cities, who were subjects of a great "systematization", meaning demolishing all houses and building mamoth blocks, containing sometimes 200-300 small apartments (40-50 square meters).

Mitulescu chose to film this movie in a suburb of communist Bucharest, where people lived in fear of being demolished (they are saying exactly this: "we will be demolished", not "our houses will be demolished"), with poor jobs, forced to be commuters, working in dirty needless factories, with their kids exposed to polution and bad education provided in schools.

Eva, a 16 years-old, is attending the courses of one of the best high-schools, together with her boyfriend. They are developing the same questions as everybody on this planet at their age: sexuality, the lack of freedom, the uncertainty of their future life. Their families are completely different, Eva's being hard-workers, honest people, but their neighbors, the parents of Florin, they are the proteges of the communist regime, with the father being an informer for Securitate (coomunist secret service, with a great role of controlling Romanian society). After a dramatic incident, Eva breaks up with Florin, producing great dispair to her parents. She's moved to another highscool and begins to think of leaving the country. In the last moments, she gives up this plan, goes back to her former life and gets back with Florin.

Although the plot might be descibed as not so satisfactory, it is planned to be that, because in this movie the atmosphere is of great importance. It manages to depict with great accuracy the feelings, thoughts and hopes of the Romanian people in this period, bringing new light to a dark segment of Romanian social history.

Dorotheea Petre is excellent in the role of Eva, convincing and with a great depth in every scene. Mircea Diaconu and Jean Constantin are already sacred monsters of Romanian cinema, with great feeling for great roles. With a cast formed in majority by student actors, "How did I Celebrated the End of the World" casts a bad shade on Romanian acting school, some of the actors declaring they did not pass the exams. They did pass it at TIFF and in the eyes of the public.

Lucian Dragos