By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Andrei Gruzsniczki
Original language title: Quod erat Demonstrandum
Country: romania
Year: 2014
Running time: 107
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2463808/combined
Kyle says: “Students of Latin and mathematical and philosophical arguments will know QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM by its more familiar abbreviation QED, meaning ‘that which has been demonstrated.’ It is an essential journey into the Romanian New Wave by way of the heart of darkness known as Communism in the 1980s. Now that we know Capitalism is every bit as insidious a political system as Communism in its heyday with regard to surveillance of citizenry, we can be clear-headed about this mysterious, terrifying, moving, beautifully conceived, written, directed and acted story being every bit as much life-affirming as it is seemingly soul-annihilating. In this, QED can refer both to a mathematical theorem that no one can understand except the professor who smuggled a paper out of the country to the West, and to circuitous Party dogma that no one can understand except Party hacks. Sorin Parvu (Sorin Leoveanu) is under grave suspicion and therefore extensive surveillance because of his seeming refusal to join the Romanian Communist Party.
”After the 1989 ‘Falling of Wall’ when I started to regularly visit my sister and friends who resided in various German cities in the Former East, I became acquainted with a man who told me about an apartment complex where he lived, in which renovation work revealed a complete recording studio hidden under a bathroom to keep watch on all the residents, as well as a camera apparatus in a tree outside the building for photographing the residents. My visit to Leipzig’s infamous Stasi (Ministry for State Security) Museum reveals a veritable James Bond arsenal of weapons and instruments for spying, such as a miniature camera that looks like a shirt button. The extent of the spying on each other included children on parents, wives and husbands on each other, lifelong best friends on each other, and recent casual friendships and new relationships which were always suspect, as the memorable German film THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006) makes clear.
“But QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM is not about the minutiae of surveillance as much as the loss of humanity and emotional nightmares that the petty lies, meticulous deceits, twisting of words, vague promises, appeals to patriotism, repeated delays in official action, and the dangling of future opportunities in housing or employment that drain the energy of the principal characters and force them to question their beliefs while poisoning their souls. ‘Each man for himself, as they say in the West!’ is an often repeated statement that is both a promise and a threat, not to mention a political indictment. Otherwise decent people are driven to extremities of behavior and emotional manipulation that can ruin both their lives and those of others. This is a brilliant piece of work, the accumulation of details in director Andrei Gruzsniczki’s careful narrative, precise direction, and gradual evolution of audience understanding of the characters’ discontent profoundly engaging. The stunningly textured state-of-the-art black-and-white cinematography by Vivi Dragan Vasile, and remarkable performances by Ofelia Popii, Sorin Leoveanu, Florin Piersic Jr., Virgil Ogasanu, and Marc Titieni which provide an example of the very best in Ensemble Performance, assist in affirming QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM as one of the very best examples of the Romanian New Wave, also called New Romanian Cinema. Either way, it is indispensable cinema. 5 cats
“Seen Thursday, March 20, 2014, New Directors/New Films at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York.”