THE DEATH OF MR LAZARESCU

Romania, 2005, 153 minutes, Colour.
Ion Fiscuteanu, Luminita Gheorghiu.
Directed by Cristi Puiu.

Ultimately, the death of Mr Lazarescu is an overpowering film. It runs for over two and a half hours and its cumulative effect is relentless. It won the prize in Un Certain Regard in Cannes, 2005, has been acclaimed at many festivals and has won Ecumenical and SIGNIS awards.

The title sounds ominous. The audience is made privy to the last hours of the life of Mr Lazarescu, a lonely and unwell man in his early 60s. An engineer, widowed, alcoholic, with ulcerous legs, seemingly bereft of family and friends, dependent on national health advice and the generosity of neighbours, he collapses with painful headaches and begs some tablets from the people next door.

All this is presented in a gritty, realistic cinema style. We are right there in Mr Lazarescu’s apartment, seeing and feeling everything with him.

Eventually an ambulance arrives and then begins a five hour journey for him, a hospital odyssey of rebuke, rejection, busyness, arrogance and inefficiency. Kindness is in short supply.

There has been a bus accident and ambulance and hospital resources are stretched, making Mr Lazarescu an extra victim. He is shunted from hospital to hospital. Doctors misdiagnose and underestimate his pain. Everyone smells his breath, lectures him on his drinking and dispense with any compassion. Sometimes authorities are prevailed on to look more closely, ultimately to offer a scan. But, it is too late. Mr Lazarescu, not always the most patient patient, deteriorates before our very eyes.

While the film is really castigating officials for their puffed-up self-importance which prevents them from acting professionally let alone humanely and castigating the meanness which seems to be inherent in human nature, it is not entirely pessimistic. The qualities of humanity are seen in Mioara, a fifty five year old woman, herself not so well and very tired, who is an ambulance assistant and accompanies Mr Lazarescu, standing up to doctors and nurses for him (and often being rudely put in her place), cares for him, understands him and offers him some companionship and comfort.

The acting is absolutely convincing. Ion Fiscuteanu embodies Mr Lazarescu – one would at times think we were watching a documentary as we see him dying in front of us. Luminata Gheorghiu is the wonderful Mioara. The smallest roles of doctors, nurses and drivers seem to be played by the real thing rather than actors.

Emotionally gruelling but excellent cinema.

1. The achievement of the film? The many awards? A humanitarian film? The Romanian setting? For Romanian audiences? Universal audiences?

2. The length of the film and its impact? The time span of the evening and the early morning? Audience involvement? The naturalism in the detail? The realism of the situation and characters? Editing and pace?

3. The title, the process of Mr Lazarescu dying? The end and his death?

4. The plausibility of the situation? The background of Mr Lazarescu and his life, his work, injuries, having to give up his job? Living alone? At the flat? His daughter living at a distance? His neighbours, friends, keeping their distance? Getting the ambulance? The background of the serious accident and the hospitals being overcrowded? Crises?

5. A film about human nature, suffering? A cantankerous and arrogant old man? An unsympathetic patient? Yet audiences beginning to understand him, his suffering and pain? His strengths and weaknesses?

6. The world of the professionals, their busyness, arrogance, self-importance? Considering the patients lower than themselves? Their talking about their qualifications and despising the non-qualified? Use of their qualifications and flaunting them?

7. Mr Lazarescu, his age, his story, wife, children, his work? His injuries, his veins and the disability of his legs, the aftermath of his unemployment? His drinking? Age, living alone? His sister and the phone call? The arguments? The issue of money, her decision to come the next day?

8. Mr Lazarescu as Everyman? On the edge of society? A man of failures? Ill? His deserving of care and sympathy?

9. Mioara, with the ambulance, her years of service, her ability in her job? The background of her family? Her own precarious health? Fifty-five years old? Her presence, attentive, professional, concerned? Giving comfort to Mr Lazarescu? Urging the ambulance staff, the doctors and nurses? Drawing on her friendship with the nurses? Yet her being humiliated by the doctors?

10. The ambulance personnel, their doing their job, efficient and effective, partly involved, not becoming involved, waiting for Mr Lazarescu, driving him to other hospitals?

11. Mr Lazarescu and his head, his headaches, their being dismissed? His reputation for drinking, everything being blamed on his alcoholism? The pills? His calling for help from his neighbours, their giving him assistance, yet lecturing him? The phone call? The discussions about Mr Lazarescu, whether he should have the ambulance or not, the explanations?

12. The background of the bus accident, on the news, the number of casualties? The victims being taken to the different hospitals? The audience and the focus on the crisis, concern about Mr Lazarescu?

13. The old lady, the doctor, advice?

14. The three different hospitals, the presentation of the staff, their smelling Mr Lazarescu, criticising him for drinking, the quality of the treatment? Their personal arrogance, conceding the possibilities that he could be worse than they thought? The nature of the delays, their effect on Mr Lazarescu? The audience seeing his decline? The scan? The medication? The inability of the doctors to cope, sending him on? Miaora being persuasive? The nurses, some being kind, some not? Miaora begging for favours?

15. The various refusals, finally his being allowed in the hospital, the diagnosis, the scan and the experience, the revelation of the cancer?

16. The audience seeing the visualising of Mr Lazarescu’s physical and mental decline, his legs and his sores, the ulcer, his being despised because of the drink, wetting himself, soiling himself, his clothes? The change of clothes? His angers, impatience? The continual ache in his head? The explanation? His consciousness – and then losing consciousness? Bewilderment? Finally comatose?

17. What was the audience left with in terms of compassion for a sick man? A man on the fringe of society? The quality of society and its care? The arrogance of the professionals? The critique of ambulance and hospital systems? Impersonal bureaucracy? Lack of care?