Satyajit Ray Award Winner, The Times BFI 51st London Film Festival, 2007

Screening at the NFT in London on Wednesday 12 March 2008

Alexandru Anton
posted 11 March 2008

This unfinished film is based on the true story of a train transporting NATO radar equipment during the Kosovo war, which had to stop for a while in a Romanian village because the overzealous railway station chief found the documents to be incomplete. The US Marines conveying the military equipment experience a culture shock, as all attempts to settle the matter seem doomed. What is most striking about the film is its capacity to keep alive several elements which are intertwined in such a way that none suffocates the other. That is to say that each distinct reality depicted by the late director Cristian Nemescu gets its share of presence and emotion.

Thus, the corrupt station chief Doiaru (Razvan Vasilescu) represents the history-stricken people who, as colourful and vivid the present may be, are still dominated by the memory of the Second World War, a memory heightened by the presence of American troops. A merit of the film is that it clearly shows how the acute sorrow and dormant hope of that period simultaneously dictate how present reality is perceived. Romanians were waiting for American salvation to come in the mid-1940s, not realising that most of the bombs that hit them were US-made. After half a century, the villagers are now face to face with the Americans, from whom they hope to find explanations for their past traumas and unfulfilled hopes (as in Doiaru's case), or better-late-than-never salvation (as in the village mayor's case).

Somewhere at another end of the spectrum, US Marine Captain Jones (Armand Assante) emanates American pragmatism and eagerness to get on with his mission, in strikingly direct contrast with the clogging bureaucracy. As he waits with increasing despair, he must decide whether to allow himself and his men to enjoy the hospitality shown by the mayor (Ion Sapdaru), or dutifully to maintain the perimeter around the military equipment.

As Armand Assante himself remarked, the script, though it looks at this true story from both Romanian and American perspectives, has an easy universality. The film’s alternation between ‘the Romanian view’ and ‘the American view’ continuously emphasises the underlying shared reality of human suffering and hope, and the more these two aspects of human nature appear to exist on both sides, the more the two sides blend into a universal humanity. As the back story of the Kosovo war is only roughly sketched out, the two parties coming together in the village are invested with freedom and personality, much as the intensity of a game of chess is exacerbated by the contrast with the quiet and gluey-rigid audience.

Each time the film’s point of view changes, the viewer is immersed into the reality of one side and becomes a careful observer of the other. The quick-changing answer to our constant question – who-is-the-main-character-now? – gives the film a dynamism, even if sometimes we are under the impression that one team is waiting for the other's move. This oscillation between viewpoints is combined with a careful objectivity as regards the sincerity of either side: the film does a good job in not becoming pro-Romanian or anti-American. The subtly suggested understanding of the overall picture helps the viewer realise that no side has intrinsic bad intentions, but is only following its course. This is further suggested by the scenes depicting both sides temporarily forgetting their aims and just taking shelter under the umbrella of offered-and-received hospitality.

The amalgam of emotions revealed by the film, in combination with the background circumstances, creates a miniature battlefield of humanity against inhumanity. Moreoever, the characters often change their own minds. This is not to say they are not decisive, but on the contrary: after the characters’ initial natural reactions seemingly dictate their course of action, a internal dialogue takes place, allowing for deeper consideration and a humane change of mind. There is a lot is going on in mind of each character.

It may at times appear as if the film takes this historical encounter just as as a pretext for bringing up the accumulated tensions, emotions, and longings of the past, and disguising a peculiarly Romanian trauma as a universal reality. However, thanks to its fair-minded treatment of the various conflicts brought up by the story, this production appears to supply possible answers to the numerous and at times discouraging what-if's raised by the reality of globalisation. What if such events, when people from different countries meet in peculiar circumstances without clear and established solutions or rules of engagement, occurred more frequently? What if people had more unique encounters which challenged fixed and inhumane attitudes? Ironically, as the film is not finished and we are left with only a glimpse of how the late Cristian Nemescu would have depicted the atmosphere years after the ‘village incident’, the answer to that what-if remains unpronounced and full of potential.