Sunday, March 13, 2022

Aferim! (Romania, 2015)

Wide screen black & white. IMDb says it's an "Adventure/Drama/Comedy". The Guardian says it's "loaded with laughs". I didn't see anything funny.  

The last I heard, Gypsies (Roma) are around 10% of the Romanian population. Gypsies were enslaved there until the 1840's or 1850's.

The movie is set in 1835. An aging constable and his teenage son are traveling through the countryside on horseback searching for an escaped slave.

People compared the movie to a western. It would have been an interesting setting for one, but it wasn't an action film beyond these two horrible people abusing Gypsies and threatening everyone else.

When I saw Kurosawa's They Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail I was surprised that Buddhist monks would own a slave . In this movie, a Christian monastery has a number of slaves working for them.

A priest says the same things white American Southern degenerate Christians said to justify slavery, that Gypsies were descendants of Ham and so on. He also states that Jews used to be giant but they evolved over to time to normal height.

Had one scene with sort of a stunt. The constable's son walks back and forth on a log in the forest several feet off the ground practicing with his sword. He keeps slashing with it.

"Stab like a man!" his father says.

Available on the Criterion Channel. See if you think it's funny.

No comments:

Post a Comment