The long awaited follow-up to The Death of Mr Lazarescu premiered at Cannes in May and is the second in his projected series of 6 films dealing with life in Romania. Aurora is the story of the fall of an ordinary man - an imperfect fall without glory. The film follows Viorel for two days as he wanders Bucharest. A recently divorced father of two young daughters, Viorel is an engineer. At work, he has an altercation with one of his co-workers who owes him money and drops in on another employee who hands over two hand-made firing pins, prepared in secret, for a hunting... rifle. Viorel wanders around Bucharest. Wherever he is, he feels the same strange nervousness, the same muffled anxiety and the same urge to end the instability that rules his life. He buys a rifle and ammunition, then goes back home to test his weapon... [show more]
This is a film made up of many long take scenes in which nothing much happens in most of them. At three hours long, it's a draining experience but there is some allure to the film. Aurora follows a middle aged engineer, with next to no emotion, who sneaks around Bucharest spying and observing people, occasionally interacting with them. Clearly a sociopath who appears to have suffered a breakdown, he buys a gun and without any explanation, uses it without much hesitation. He's clearly unhappy with a number of people including ex-family members. The one decent relationship he does have which appears intact is with an older lady he calls Pusa who appears t be his mother but this is made unclear. The intrigue of the film is one's desire to find out who all the people he visits are, why he does what he does and what has caused him to snap. We find out bits of information but just when we think we're going to get all the information when the engineer decides to talk, he isn't allowed to explain his actions and behaviour. They are deemed too complex for the authorities and institutions that run Bucharest. This implies that the lives of human beings are clearly not so simple as society's wish to try to find answers for everyone's actions in straightforward terms. This film is clearly not for everyone as it tries to use cinema in a different way to shine a light on the dysfunctional protagonist of our film.
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Dark thriller written and directed by Cristi Puiu, who also stars in the lead role. Divorced father of two Viorel (Puiu) is deeply troubled. As he goes around the city of Bucharest he interacts with the people in his life but before long something inside him snaps and he commits murder. The film provides an insight into the mind of a psychopath and questions the motives behind such a violent act.
A man struggling with the dark side of his nature succumbs to his violent impulses in this drama from filmmaker Cristi Puiu. Viorel (Cristi Puiu) is a man whose sanity hangs in the balance; while he tries to keep his emotions in check, something inside him is starting to boil over. As Viorel interacts with his girlfriend (Clara Voda), his mother (Valeria Seciu) and stepfather (Valentin Popescu), and some friends and former co-workers, it's obvious that something is troubling him, even if he won't talk about it. Over the course of one day, Viorel argues with those close to him, calls in some old debts, buys parts for a gun, drives around town, watches his home being taken apart, and finally explodes, killing a stranger. But this isn't close to the end of Viorel's strange, dark story.
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