|
 (041926)
Kontinental ’25 is an absurdist dark comedy about a magistrate who must deal
with her guilt after a homeless man she has evicted hangs himself. The film
savagely pokes fun at the pathetic state of modern capitalist societies, which
often victimize the poor in the name of progress, and it also effectively
skewers the hypocrisy of neo-liberalism. Similar to other philosophical films
like
The Secret Agent,
this film is somewhat hard to digest on first viewing, but once it sinks in, the
cumulative effects are hard to shake off.
The whole low-budget film was shot on an iPhone in just 10 days with no
artificial lighting or grip equipment. The director said, “Many films about
poverty are made with multimillion-dollar budgets. I wanted to push against
that.” This film avoids the unintentional irony and hypocrisy of films like
Avatar,
which push a "let’s go back to nature" message while using only the most
expensive equipment and technology. But Kontinental ‘25 looks better than most
big-budget films. Part of the reason is that the film has excellent shot
composition, and it often captures unusual buildings designed with
ultra-European architectural techniques, which are pleasing to the eye. Other
impressive films shot on iPhones include Sean Baker’s Tangerine (2015), Steve
Soderbergh’s Unsane (2018) and High Flying Bird (2019), and
28 Years Later
(2025). Outside of Tangerine, this is the best-looking iPhone film I have ever
seen.
This film is part of a broader film renaissance in Romania that has been
underway since the early 2000s. Many of the best films ever to come out of that
country were produced in the last 25 years. Some other outstanding Romanian
films include 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), which won the Palme d’Or,
plus Graduation (2016) and
R.M.N. (2022), both by the talented Cristian Mungiu.
Another key Romanian work is The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), in which the
director served as assistant director. Many of these films chronicle the
negative societal conditions that followed the fall of communism.
Radu Jade is definitely the most surreal of the new wave of Romanian filmmakers,
and his work owes less to pure neo-realism than his peers'. The dreamy,
quasi-comedic tone of this film resembles that of the Hungarian film On Body and
Soul (2017).
Jade also directed I Don’t Care if we Go Down in History as Barbarians (2017),
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021), and Do Not Expect Too Much at the End of
the World (2023.) He also shot a Dracula film that was released this year also
using the same lead actress, Tompa, which may have been the first film of its
type to be made in Transylvania. Currently, he is working on a version of
Frankenstein.
Rade’s early works were classical narratives, but lately his films have played
more like experimental cinematic essays that respond to previous works or
changes in society. Kontinental '25 is a homage or answer to Roberto
Rossellini’s Europa 51, reworking its themes in a more modern, gentrifying
setting. Like Europa 51, it also features a flawed protagonist (played by Ingrid
Bergman in Europa 51 and Eszter Tompa here) and her reaction to the unexpected,
sudden suicide. The mom in Europa ‘25 becomes more humanistic after her son's
death, similar to this film’s protagonist.
The film starts out with us getting to know a spontaneous homeless man named
Ion,, who spends his days carelessly experiencing life and soaking in the
sights, both beautiful and ugly, as he makes the rounds begging for money. We
see Ion pass garish, ugly robot dinosaurs and a mechanical robot dog, which
seems to mock the use of technology for commercial purposes, the tourist-trap
commodification of history, and the trivialization of technology. The film shows
scorn for the ugliest aspects of modern civilization.
It turns out he is squatting in a messy basement in an apartment building that
is about to be leveled. City officials have ordered its demolition so they can
build a luxury hotel called the Kontinental, which is sure to gentrify the
neighborhood. The director, Rade, taught at a film school in an elite area
called Cluj, which is like Romania's Silicon Valley, so this film, which was
shot there, tries to show the contradictions in the lives of the affluent and
how poorly planned economic expansion made poor people suffer.
The film was shot in Transylvania, which was part of Hungary but is now in
Romania. The main character, named Orsoyla, is an ethnically Hungarian woman
representing Romania, so she is caught between two often-odds cultures. Then
Orsolya, a court bailiff, shows up with police to enforce the eviction notice.
Americans can probably be forgiven if they are reminded of ICE. Orsolya thinks
of herself as a very decent person, and she has given Ion many warnings. She
even leaves briefly to give him time to gather and remove his belongings, and
she offers to provide a ride to a shelter. But while they are gone, Ion takes
the opportunity to twist a wire around his neck and hang himself on a radiator.
Orsolya is a liberal who sees herself as socially conscious and sends money to
help Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression . But at the same time, she is
rather clueless and fails to see her role in victimizing the poor and benefiting
from the monstrously unjust, socially stratified system. She can’t see that she
is benefiting from the misfortune of others. She rationalizes it all because she
shows a slight bit of empathy and warns the evictees before she throws them out
into the streets.
Her boss is not very bothered by the suicide and argues it was not her fault and
that the homeless man has a criminal history anyway, so it was basically no big
loss. But we later learn Ion’s tragic history. The only reason he was arrested
was that he was freezing, so he stole a couple of wooden crosses to add to the
fire, and he was charged with desecrating a cemetery.
After the suicide, Orsolya undergoes an existential crisis. In one scene, she
prays for guidance near an animatronic dinosaur while a man is kicking a robotic
dog. The bizarre juxtaposition of the traditional and modern brings to mind the
great shot in La Dolce Vita of a helicopter carrying a statue of the Madonna.
Orsolya sends her husband and kids off on a Greek vacation alone, and she goes
on a long journey . She seeks solace from various sources, trying to get help
figuring out the meaning of it all. But is she really trying to make a change,
or is this all just virtue signaling, or is she trying to massage her deserved
guilt?
She goes from person to person, and each gives him a different analysis or
explanation. The first person she visits is her rude mom. She finds out to her
horror that her mom has fascist tendencies and is supporting the Hungarian
dictator, Viktor Orbán. In real life, this dictator, one of the worst in Europe,
has just been voted out. Their hysterical conversations are surprisingly
familiar and could have taken place between any liberal and any MAGA supporter
in modern America. She next speaks to a former student who tells really violent
Buddhist folk tales to her, which don’t help, but he does enjoy sleeping with
him. Finally, a Father Serbian, a priest (played by Serbin Pavluv), who gives
her inspirational clichés.
Kontinental '25 contains a humorous video of kids dressed as Deadpool jumping
through fire. This hysterical scene seems to ridicule the frequently negative
influence of American cinema on Romanian youth and superhero films in
particular, and perhaps Jackass. The film unexpectedly ends with a fine
discussion between Richard Linklater and the two filmmakers, who seem to have
formed a mutual admiration society and are influenced by each other. The two
discuss the mutual influence of the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism, and
the importance of Roberto Rossellini’s work.
This is not a perfect film, and it does not quite reach the delirious
creative heights of Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. It also
takes an unusually long time to get started, and the first 25 minutes or so are
basically boring. But as it goes along, it gets better and better. And bits and
pieces keep coming back to you in your mind long after you have seen the film. Kontinental
'25 is filled with magic moments and is much more powerful,
thought-provoking, and evocative than most other films.
|
