Our viewing of “Aferim!” (same timeslot as for “Under Electric Clouds”, same cinema, same announcer) started out as a disaster. I was in a terrible mood, the guy announced the film as “a fun road movie without much deeper meaning” (which really irked me and I was happy to see that he was utterly wrong) and, worst of all, they started playing “Under Electric Clouds”. After I yelled into the audience “You are showing the wrong movie!”, it took a precious 6 minutes from the start till they got the right movie going. This is important because I needed to catch the last train back home! At least my sickness has slightly improved and I was immensely glad to be able to go to sleep shortly after 1am.
This film also ended my long-ish streak of great movies the last few days, but that is alright, it’s simply part of the Berlinale to see a few less good ones.
Aferim!
Romania/Bulgaria/Czech Republic 2015, Radu Jude, 108′
The gendarm Costadin takes his son on a quest to find a runaway Roma slave, Carfin. While looking for him, they meet a variety of people, some tell them lots about their views on the world and its people, some get into arguments and conflicts with them, some help them with their quest (for the right fee, of course). After finding Carfin, things get even more complicated. It turns out Carfin was not wanted for theft but for having had an affair with his master’s wife, and he is afraid that his master will kill him for it.
I don’t think I have heard so many racist comments in a movie and laughed at them so much. Because the whole thing is set in a different time, I tend to brush it off as a product of its time and therefore as something funny. But like I hinted before, there is a deeper message hidden here. “Aferim!” is a subtle history lesson, but it’s so subtle that I didn’t quite get the whole picture. I had no idea what was going on in Wallachia in the year of 1835 (apparently it was under Turkish control), heck I don’t even know where Wallachia is. I have no idea how the Ottoman Empire evolved over the years, and I know even less about any of those countries east of Austria and south of the Czech Republic. The only Romanian film I saw was “4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days” which is foremost a small-scale human drama. It’s embarrassing, but I didn’t think much about its politics until I saw the film, and the film had to teach me everything about its times. In that respect the movie did an amazing job despite its subtlety. Loris noted how amused he was at the nobleman’s head gear, and it seems that costumes play an important role in showing the hierarchies and relationships between people.
While I only was able to get a glimpse of the politics at hand, the film is full of interesting human interactions, especially with the Roma population. Most of all, I think the movie is actually trying to understand where all the problems with the Roma and Sinti today are coming from, how less than 200 years ago these people were slaves without a shred a human dignity left to them, and how it is inevitable that they cannot easily escape this kind of cultural burden. Behind that veil of humorous fun, the way people speak about the Roma population is quite atrocious and it’s ultimately only slightly better today. I think “Aferim!” does a wonderful job at getting this point across, heck its title is pure ironic greatness. The Ottoman Turkish term apparently means “bravo!” with a hint of irony, which is exactly how it is meant when it appears several times in the film. I didn’t know that when seeing the film, but now it makes me want to revisit those scenes again.
Back in the day, “4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days” came out during a time when Romanian cinema was really hot. The fad seems to have died out, but apparently Romania still produces great movies, just like South Korea does after the “Oldboy” mania faded. I remember how much I suffered seeing these late night screenings while being down with an almost feverish cold, but both “Under Electric Clouds” and “Aferim!” were totally worth it. For my top 30 films of all times, I have this rule that I only include films which taught me something about the human condition. Even though “Aferim!” will not make it into the list, it definitely passed that criterion.