SHOWTIMES: 9:20p - SAT 11/7 | 5:35p - SUN 11/8
Part of the WENDEKINO Film Festival
WINNER: 2006 Cannes Film Festival: Golden Camera: Corneliu Porumboiu
WINNER: 2006 Copenhagen International Film Festival: Golden Swan: Best Film and Best Screenplay
When revolutions occur, there is an assumption that one side won and the other lost. There's another way to look at revolutions that isn't so cut and dry. With a sly wink, 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST cleverly takes on the aftermath of the December 1989 revolution in Romania that resulted in the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaucescu. It's a movie that seems simple, yet its subtle and brilliant complexity is not to be denied.
Sixteen years after the overthrow, three men's lives come together on a talk show to find out "was there or wasn't there a revolution in our town." Revolution, in this case, is determined by whether the citizens of the town gathered in the town square before or after 12:08, the official time Ceauescu fled Bucharest, ending Communist rule in Romania. The ensuing discussion is at times hilarious, at times bittersweet.
First-time feature film director Corneliu Porumboiu uses a single stationary camera to its best effect as he first sets up the personalities and present-day lives of the three protagonists as they approach the time in which two of the men will explain their involvement in the movement.
Manescu (Ion Sapdaru) is a drunken history teacher who owes everybody money. The only one who helps him out is a Chinese man whom Manescu consistently demeans when inebriated in public. Piscoci (Mircea Andreescu) is an elderly grump who pretends to be willing to help out whenever the community needs a Santa Claus. Jderescu (Teodor Corban) is the ambitious and pompous TV station owner who wants to impress with a serious show about his town's involvement with the revolution only to sit in horror as his plan backfires on television.
Whether there was a revolution in the town or not still reverberates in Jderescu's determination to salvage the broadcast. It's up to the audience to decide whom to believe, but more important, revolution or not, what happened that day in December 1989 changed a nation - and a small town - for better and sometimes for worse.
sf.gate
