Foundational Masterpiece of Romanian New Wave
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
A 150-minute odyssey through the labyrinthine medical system of post-communist Bucharest. A profound meditation on mortality, systemic indifference, and human dignity.
A long night’s journey into death
It must be like this with many people, and not just in Romania. A smelly old drunk calls for an ambulance after having a headache for four days. The ambulance service asks him so many questions he doubts they believe him, and he asks his neighbors for help. They stretch him out on a sofa, ask him how he feels and complain about the stink of his cats. They call the ambulance again.
“The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” will follow this dying man for most of the night, as he gradually slips away from the world and the world little notices. The movie is not heartless but it is matter-of-fact, and makes no attempt to heighten the drama. In its relentless gaze at exactly what happens, it reminds me of the Dardenne brothers (“The Son,” “L'Enfant“), whose films see everything but do not intervene.
Mr. Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu) has long lived in his cluttered Bucharest apartment. He has a sister in a nearby town, and a child in Canada, neither much concerned with him. He gives such information to his neighbors, while slowly drifting out of contact with reality. Then the ambulance arrives, with the attendant and the driver Leo (Gabriel Spahiu). In the course of this night, they will take him to four hospitals. It is a long night and a long film, but not a slow one, because we are drawn so deeply into it.
At hospitals, the obviously incompetent Mr. Lazarescu is asked to fill out forms, sign consents and answer questions he does not understand. Each hospital suggests sending him to another one. He is nevertheless given a scan which reveals a blood clot on his brain, and a problem with his liver that “nobody,” a doctor observes, “is going to be able to do anything about.” One of the CT scan technicians almost rejoices: “These neoplasms are Discovery Channel stuff!”
Observation
Long, uninterrupted takes and a restless handheld camera create an almost documentary-like immediacy.
Minimalism
Absence of non-diegetic music. The score is the clinical hum of fluorescent lights and labored breathing.
Dark Absurdity
Balancing tragedy with dry, bleak comedy found in bureaucratic bickering and medical egos.
The film’s focus is never on Mr. Lazarescu, who becomes disoriented and finally almost speechless, and who was probably not good company on his best days. It does not help that he wets himself during a CT scan, and then soils his pants. We focus on the ambulance attendant, who is given one opportunity after another to dump her patient, but stubbornly wants to be sure someone actually pays him attention. Her job is to take sick people to hospitals. If they are not admitted, her life is meaningless.
There is a rule about the movies: Never take an expert to a movie about his or her specialty. “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” is an exception. I suspect medical professionals would see much they recognize in this movie. The credits include a long list of technical advisers, but it doesn’t take an adviser to convince you the movie is authentic. Like “United 93” and the work of the Dardenne brothers, it lives entirely in the moment, seeing what happens as it happens, drawing no conclusions, making no speeches, creating no artificial dramatic conflicts, just showing people living one moment after another, as they must.
Note: The man’s full name is Dante Remus Lazarescu. Dante wrote of the circles of hell. Remus was a co-founder of ancient Rome, killed by his twin. Lazarescu reminds us of Lazarus, who was lucky enough to find someone who could raise him from the dead.
The film, directed and co-written by Cristi Puiu, has been described as a criticism of the health services in Romania. At least in Romania he is not asked for his insurance company, and he has a theoretical right to free medical care. On Cinematical.com, a doctor posted this message: “As a Romanian physician I would say it’s worse than shown. The misery of Romanian hospitals is not shown at all. By the way, this is based on a true story of a man turned down at five Bucharest hospitals in 1997 and eventually left in the street by the paramedics and found dead next morning (the paramedic got fired).”
videocamReal Time
Events often unfold in real-time, emphasizing the weight of passing minutes.
sentiment_dissatisfiedBlack Humor
Tragedy and comedy intertwine, often finding laughter in despair.
apartmentSocial Realism
Set in cramped apartments and gray institutions, stripping away glamour.
gavelBureaucracy
Characters are often trapped in endless mazes of rules and paperwork.
Cristian Mungiu
"The most decorated filmmaker of the group, Mungiu is known for his surgical precision and intense moral dramas. His Palm d'Or win in 2007 put Romania firmly on the cinematic map."
Major Works
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007): A harrowing drama about a woman helping her friend secure an illegal abortion in the final years of the Communist regime. This film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, establishing Mungiu as a global auteur and putting the Romanian New Wave on the map.
Beyond the Hills (2012): Inspired by true events involving a death at a Romanian monastery, this film is a deep inquiry into the collision between personal faith, institutional rigidity, and the inability of a secular society to provide true support for the vulnerable.
Graduation (2016): A nuanced exploration of parental anxiety and institutional corruption, centering on a father who resorts to unethical means to ensure his daughter’s academic success.
R.M.N. (2022): A sprawling, multi-layered look at xenophobia and communal breakdown in a small Transylvanian village, using a localized conflict to reflect on broader European societal tensions.
Fjord (2026): Mungiu's most recent work, which earned him his second Palme d'Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, marking him as one of the few filmmakers in history to achieve this milestone twice.
Cristi Puiu
"Often considered the father of the New Wave with his 2001 film 'Stuff and Dough'. His style is rigorous, demanding, and philosophically dense, often pushing the limits of realism."
Pivotal Films
Stuff and Dough (2001): Often cited as the film that launched the Romanian New Wave. A gritty, low-budget road movie that stripped away the romanticized tropes of Romanian cinema, it proved that a compelling story could be built entirely on the mundane anxiety of the post-Communist transition.
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005): Perhaps his most influential work. It follows an elderly man’s night-long, doomed journey through a series of chaotic and indifferent hospitals in Bucharest. It is a devastating, darkly humorous, and technically masterful critique of a failing state system.
Aurora (2010): A deeply polarizing and challenging film in which Puiu himself stars as a man committing a series of calculated murders. It is an exercise in extreme patience and psychological opacity, refusing to offer the audience easy answers about the protagonist's motives.
Sieranevada (2016): A claustrophobic, sprawling, and virtuosic ensemble piece set almost entirely within a single apartment during a family memorial dinner. It captures the cacophony of private lives, historical revisionism, and interpersonal friction in contemporary Romania.
Corneliu Porumboiu
"The master of deadpan humor. Porumboiu explores the nuances of language, rules, and the absurdity of authority with a lighter, yet deeply intellectual touch."
Key Works
12:08 East of Bucharest (2006): His breakout debut, which won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes. It centers on a local TV talk show in a small town attempting to settle a question: "Was there a revolution in our town, or not?" It is a brilliant, hilarious look at how history is rewritten, debated, and ultimately obscured by individual memory.
Police, Adjective (2009): A quintessential Porumboiu film. A police officer refuses to arrest a teenager for smoking hashish because he is morally opposed to the law, leading to a long, excruciating, and fascinating final act where he uses a dictionary to argue about the definitions of "conscience" and "law."
The Treasure (2015): A modern-day fable where two neighbors hire a metal detector to find a legendary stash of gold buried in a backyard. It starts as a heist film and turns into an offbeat, deadpan exploration of hope and the "unearthing" of the past.
Infinite Football (2018): A documentary that perfectly encapsulates his obsession with rules. He profiles a childhood friend—a local bureaucrat—who has spent years trying to invent a "better" version of football to reduce player injuries and create a more equitable game.
The Whistlers (2019): His most genre-focused film, a neo-noir crime thriller involving a secret, whistled language used by criminals on the island of La Gomera. It retains his love for language and complex systems, but frames them within a high-stakes, international conspiracy.
Radu Jude
"The rebel of the group. While starting in realism, he has evolved into making wild, experimental collages that tackle history and politics with aggression and satire."
Essential Films
Aferim! (2015): A stunning, black-and-white historical "Western" set in 19th-century Wallachia. It follows a local policeman hunting for an escaped Romani slave. By using period-accurate language and attitudes, Jude highlights the deep-seated roots of racism and servitude in the national psyche.
"I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians" (2018): Perhaps his most meta-textual work. It centers on a theater director trying to stage a public reenactment of the 1941 Odessa massacre (perpetrated by Romanian troops). It is a biting critique of how nations sanitize their own atrocities to maintain a heroic national identity.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021): A pandemic-era masterwork that won the Golden Bear in Berlin. It follows a schoolteacher whose private sex tape leaks online, leading to a public "trial" at a parent-teacher meeting. It is a chaotic, hilarious, and savage satire of contemporary moral hypocrisy, internet culture, and the culture wars.
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023): A sprawling, frantic film that tracks an overworked production assistant running around Bucharest to film a corporate "safety video." It masterfully intercuts modern life with clips from a 1980s Romanian film, creating a jarring, brilliant portrait of how labor and exploitation have evolved (or stayed the same) from Communism to modern capitalism.
The Symbolism of Names
Dante
References Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. A descent into the circles of the Romanian medical hell.
Lăzărescu
References Lazarus. Ironically, in this secular world, no Savior arrives to perform a miracle.
Key Themes and Style
1. Minimalist Realism (The Romanian New Wave)
The film is a masterclass in the aesthetic that would define the Romanian New Wave:
Long Takes: Puiu uses extended, handheld shots that create a claustrophobic sense of "lived reality."
Naturalism: The dialogue is overlapping and procedural, making it feel less like a scripted drama and more like a documentary.
Black Comedy: While the subject is tragic, the film is laced with a "blacker-than-black" humor derived from the absurdity of human interaction and systemic incompetence.
2. The Dantean Allegory
The protagonist's full name—Dante Remus Lăzărescu—is thick with symbolism:
Dante: Like Dante Alighieri, he begins a descent into an "Inferno." Instead of circles of hell, he traverses different hospitals, each more clinical and alienating than the last.
Lăzărescu (Lazarus): A reference to the biblical figure raised from the dead. However, in Puiu’s vision, there is no miracle; the film is a record of a slow, unceremonious exit from the world.
Virgil: Interestingly, the "guide" figures in the film are subverted. His brother-in-law, named Virgil, is absent when needed, leaving the paramedic Mioara to act as his only true (though powerless) advocate.
3. Critique of Post-Communist Society
The film serves as a scathing indictment of the transition from communism to a neglected capitalist healthcare system. It highlights:
Hierarchical Brutality: Doctors frequently belittle the paramedic and treat the elderly patient as a nuisance because of his smell and his history of drinking.
The "Everyman" Tragedy: Much like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the film argues that the passing of an ordinary, flawed human being is worthy of epic attention.
Legacy
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu proved that a low-budget, hyper-local story could resonate globally. It paved the way for other landmark Romanian films like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) and Police, Adjective (2009). In 2017, The New York Times ranked it as the 5th best film of the 21st century so far.
