Reconstruction [Romania 1968]

Reconstituirea
Director: L. Pintilie
Cinematographer: S. Huzum

A very thinly veiled piece of powerful social criticism, this film seems to be a metaphor for socialist Romania as a sort of theatrical production, mirroring comments made by some Romanians in Ben Lewis's documentary, in which one of them claims that all Romanians were actors, putting on a performance for Ceauşescu. Formally speaking, this film is among the best of the 1960s films.

The 'reconstruction' in question is a reconstruction of a fight between young people, made for an educational film to teach people not to abuse alcohol. Like Camera Buff, this film therefore makes use of the device of putting film-making self-consciously at the centre of the film itself. The opening shots are through the eyes of the film-maker, and the film also takes several humorous digs at film-makers, treating them as prima donnas, etc.

But there is more to the camera idea than just this; primarily it seems to serve as a metaphor for the Romanian people putting on a show, a performance, in which they are made to alter the past to fit with what is supposed to be true. Thus, while actually those involved in the original fight now completely forgive each other, they are made to stand and hit each other, even if softly; the film-maker repeatedly says 'Hit him, hit him', while one of the boys cannot bring himself to hit his friend, although his idiotic friend is happy to participate enthusiastically. And although they are at first told to reconstruct what originally happened, it rapidly becomes clear that they are also to alter things, and to fight more than they did in reality.

One way of reading this metaphor is that it reflects the portrayal of class struggle in pre-socialist Romania, and therefore suggests that Romanians were turned against each other by the leadership, when their real conflicts were quite different and could have been resolved in another way. Also, because this is done for an educational film, this could suggest that this is the way in which capitalism is being falsely portrayed to people.

The idea that Romanians are turned against each other is reinforced by the climax of the film, at the end, where we see masses of Romanians essentially turned into violent animals. In the absence of the leadership, which manages to pull them together in a mass effort to benefit the leaders (symbolically, pushing the chief prosecutor's car out of a mud puddle), the people degenerate into totally pointless violence against each other. The point seems to be that a façade of co-operation has been created, behind which lies a society of people who have been turned into subhuman, violent creatures.

Moreover, the idea of the people having been conned into a false dream is reinforced by the fact that the two boys have to make the film as a 'better alternative' to being put in prison, but that actually making the film itself becomes torture. The intellectual who is the voice of conscience in the film thus cries out that they are being treated in an inhuman way, and that there mere fact of not putting them in prison does not justify this kind of treatment. In other words, this could easily be read as a criticism of the way in which dissent may have been met with claims that, while things might be difficult, they would be even more difficult under capitalism. There is a sense that the leadership here have saved the boys from one bad fate only to hold it over their heads and use it to torture them.

The symbolism of the leadership and social structure is interesting. It is very tempting to view the chief prosecutor as representing Ceauşescu. He is the one orchestrating the performance, though he does none of it personally; he spends most of the film sunning himself by the lake, and at the end as he rides away in his car he tellingly waves like a leader to crowds of people, who wave back to him. This seems so thinly veiled as to be almost absurd. Meanwhile, the whole business of the reconstruction is managed by his agent, a military man, who may have somewhat old fashioned ways of motivating the two boys, but in the end sympathises with them and shares cigarettes with them. He seems to do what he does out of a sense of duty, even if he may disagree with it; as when he goes off on a literal 'goose chase', even if grumbling. This would seem to represent many of those who obeyed the leadership dutifully, perhaps out of a sense of not being qualified to question things.

Finally there is the intellectual, who is there for no obvious reason, but spends the film decrying the cruelty of the whole affair, and turns out to be an alcoholic. Then, after drinking, he finally bursts, and actually makes the political metaphor completely explicit. He complains once more about the injustice of the whole thing, and is accused of being drunk; to which he responds that whenever people criticise, they are just accused of being drunk, or having an uncle in Mexico, or whatever. This is of course utterly telling. If that were not enough, he steps out of the film for a moment by saying something like 'And do you wonder why they chose a beach hut for this? A place where people go to take their rest after 8 hours work, and they sabotage it?', which seems to be a statement on the film itself. In other words there seems to be a further point here about the holiday setting of the film; even in the place where people get their respite from work, they have to put on a performance and are unable to be free from hypocritical demands.

This holiday setting forms an interesting parallel with the film Knife in the Water, which also takes place on a body of water, and also involves a strong criticism of the bureaucracy. In both films, there is also a situation of generational conflict; clearly, the young are the powerless, while the old hold all the power. In both, there is a beautiful young woman wearing a bikini who tantalises the young throughout the film, though they are kept away by the situation created by the old. And in both, there is a somewhat awkward young person who for a while willingly goes along with the demands of the older.

The theme of sexual tension is reinforced by the girl repeatedly appearing to giggle at the circus being put on by the men, though eventually she is brought to tears when they start to really hurt each other. She seems to represent a kind of purity and innocence to which the boys cannot have access because they are imprisoned by their situation. There is a parallel with WR: Mysteries of the Organism here, as her sexuality draws one of the boys, but although he cannot restrain his urge to kiss her at one point, he does not want anything more to do with her after that. He seems absorbed by the violence through which he is being put, and therefore sexually stunted, somehow cut off from what might be seen as teenage normalcy. Thus the presence of the girl reinforces the injustice of the situation.

There is also the theme of generational conflict here. Throughout, the boys would rather be doing something else; in particular, the idiotic one thinks about football, about climbing a mountain, etc. This serves to strengthen the feeling that their priorities are quite different from the older generation, which seems to be arbitrarily imposing its own aims on them. In that way, this film fits into the tradition of films of generational conflict of the 1960s, like Born in '45 and Black Peter. It seems here that the alignment between generations and politics is slightly less powerful; the older generation are also victimised somewhat by other members of the older generation. But there is definitely a sense that the young in particular, partly because of their particularly powerless situation, are being made to acquiesce in something contrary to their nature.

Formally speaking, the film makes use of a few interesting techniques. One is its use of irritating sound effects; all the characters arrive to the sound of an incessant car horn, which goes on for far longer than one might expect, and only turns off in the middle of a shot in which the girl is swimming beautifully along in the lake. This serves to introduce the arrival of a ridiculous, cacophonous and in the end ugly social situation in to what is up until then a summer holiday idyll. There are other interesting uses of sound; we never really get music, except in little pieces from a radio, which are in some cases interrupted by people (e.g. the chief prosecutor) complaining about it. The sound never allows us to completely settle in; instead it jars us from any feeling of comfort and keeps us alert, while also creating a sense of realism.

This realism is not a simple one. For the visual realism of the film fades in and out. In the introductory shots, the film feels slightly surreal; then it introduces enough realism to lure the viewer into some comfort with the film, but every so often it reintroduces an incongruent shot which unsettles things. An example is the way in which an impossible number of people pile out of the car that arrives at the lake, or the way in which the intellectual steps out of role for one line to comment on the film itself. More powerfully, at the end of the film masses of Romanians show up out of nowhere to walk along the lake, which does not feel jarring at all, because by that time the metaphor has become so clear that it makes sense.

Another small point to make about the formalism is that at least on the surface, there are some shared symbols with Closely Observed Trains. In both, we see an old woman stroking the neck of a goose; we see a boy chasing a girl leaving on a train; we see a car arriving full of officials from far away. These could all be coincidences of visual similarity, but certainly both films say something about sexual discovery and youth, though in this film the point seems to be that they are being sidelined or forgotten because of the situation in which the young are stuck.

So, this film seems to be extremely critical of Romanian socialism, and particularly of the situation of the younger generation. This seems curious for several reasons. One is that according to some, the popularity of the Ceauşescu government, which was only 3 years old at the time this film was made, was rather high at the time; there was no issue of Romania's complicity in e.g. the events in Czechoslovakia of 1968, as the government had condemned them. If this film is to be believed, there certainly must have been elements of Romanian youth, including Pintilie himself, who were deeply dissatisfied. A second curious point is that the film does not appear to have been shelved, although according to the BFI guide, Pintilie promptly left the country after it was made to work elsewhere. Of course, the late 1960s were by some accounts a period of opening up in Romania following the 9th Party Congress in 1965. This film may testify to the genuine liberalisation associated with that period. And, as e.g. glasnost, or the Chinese rectification campaign of 1957, demonstrate, periods of opening up to criticism do not necessarily make that criticism any less vehement or venomous. This is a piece of seriously critical film, which could be taken as criticising the leadership, the bureaucracy, the press, or even the existence of socialism itself. Given the events in Romania beginning in the early 1970s, it makes some sense that someone like Pintilie would have left.

This film can be taken as part of several critical traditions within socialist film-making. It is part of the 1960s tradition of post-war generational conflict over values; it is part of criticism about treatment of the youth and sexuality; it is part of criticism about the manipulation of the truth, as in Camera Buff. But it is possibly also part of the tradition of rather extremely anti-socialist films, like the Bulgarian film 'Margarit and Margarita'. It fits within the flowering of formal methods of the 1960s, and while this very sophistication serves to perhaps make the criticism more subtle, in the end this film is a very blunt instrument of political criticism.