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57
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55
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54
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54
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53
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53
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52
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51
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51
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43
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42
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81
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80
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78
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77
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76
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75
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75
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74
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74
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73
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73
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72
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72
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72
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71
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71
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71
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70
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67
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67
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66
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66
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66
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65
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|
Death of Mr. Lazarescu, The
Tartan USA
 |
|
MPAA RATING: R for language and brief nudity
Starring
Ion Fiscuteanu,
Luminita Gheorghiu,
Gabriel Spahiu,
Doru Ana,
Dana Dogaru,
Florin Zamfirescu,
Clara Voda,
and
Adrian Titieni
Anyone who has waited for treatment in an emergency room or chafed under the less than devoted care of a disinterested doctor will recognize Mr. Lazarescu's dilemma. A 60-ish widower, living alone in Bucharest with his cats, he feels sick enough one evening to call an ambulance. This is the beginning of his Dantesque odyssey deep into the bowels of a big city medical establishment. It's a story that could take place anywhere and Mr. Lazarescu could be your next-door neighbor – or he could be you. (Tartan Films)
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
Drama
|
Foreign
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Cristi Puiu
Razvan Radulescu
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Cristi Puiu
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: September 12, 2006
Theatrical: April 26, 2006
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
154 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
Romania |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
Romanian (with English subtitles) |
Original title "Moartea Domnului Lazarescu"; Un Certain Regard Award, 2005 Cannes Film Festival; Nominated, Best Foreign Film (Romania), 2006 Independent Spirit Awards

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Mr. Lazarescu is that rich and riveting a film of universal small human moments and big-system failure.

100
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Both sad and darkly funny, the film is so sharply conceived and richly populated that it often registers like a Frederick Wiseman documentary, even though everything is scripted and every part played by a professional... This is only the second feature of Cristi Puiu, who claims to have been inspired by his own hypochondria, but he's already clearly a master.

100
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
A heartbreakingly powerful masterpiece.

100
Premiere
Ethan Alter
Never anything less than wholly engrossing. There's a lot of humor to be found here (primarily of the dark comedy variety) and the cumulative impact of Lazarescu's journey through the Bucharest medical system is quite powerful.

100
TV Guide
Ken Fox
It's full of humor, pathos and a deep humanism that comes as a warm blast in this age of lifeless, cinematic junk.

100
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
It is a black comedy, among the blackest. It is also more grueling in some stretches than anything in "United 93."

100
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Like "United 93" and the work of the Dardenne brothers, it lives entirely in the moment, seeing what happens as it happens, drawing no conclusions, making no speeches, creating no artificial dramatic conflicts, just showing people living one moment after another, as they must.

100
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
The movie is a stunner, so hypnotic that the length hardly matters.

100
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu runs the same 2 1/2 hours as "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," but what a difference a comic-dramatic purpose makes.

100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
Devastating, uncompromising and riveting.

100
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
A watchful, winding-down tragedy of a movie that delivers what it promises. As commentary, it's grim. As filmmaking, it's a powerfully disturbing odyssey through the Bucharest health care system.

91
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Noel Murray
An intoxicating performance piece in which skilled actors pinball off each other with such energy and nuance that the audience almost forgets about the dying man on the edge of the frame. The style alone makes the movie's point.

90
Newsweek
David Ansen
Puiu's is the art of the seemingly artless: he takes a story that's utterly unglamorous and mundane, and transforms it into something mythic.

90
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
Almost as exhilarating as it is depressing. Puiu's filmmaking technique is remarkable, and all the more so because it's almost invisible.

90
Variety
Jay Weissberg
Picture's dour take on the dehumanizing process of medical treatment is leavened by black humor and dialogue that always rings true.

90
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
An explicit ode to mortality, not without a certain grim humor.

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
By recording this all too commonplace and dehumanizing process, Puiu's film shows the sick old man and the strangers who deal with him to be all too human - extraordinarily so.

80
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
A thorny masterpiece.

80
The New Yorker
David Denby
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, for all its terrible matter-of-factness, produces tumultuous feelings of amazement and revolt.

80
Empire
David Parkinson
Long, but engrossing and frequently enraging drama that not only exposes the flaws in the Romanian health service, but also in modern humanity.

80
Washington Post
Philip Kennicott
It's long, but it's also very real and worth every minute.

70
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
This Romanian movie defies categorization--it's halfway between a black comedy and a Fred Wiseman documentary. And it haunts you like the ghost of any dead person you've ever ignored.

70
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
Unlike the zippy American medical dramas it apes, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is paid out with the deliberate slowness of a dray horse straining up a mountain path. With every painstaking turn of the screw that seals Lazarescu's sorry fate, Puiu flirts with tedium, but tedium is the point of this hyperrealist tale, paced in what feels like real time.

70
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Though it is undeniably bleak and pessimistic and marked by a texture of observation worthy of British director Mike Leigh, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is not as forbidding as it sounds.

70
Film Threat
Phil Hall
Do not, under any circumstance, approach this film lightly. Prepare to be depressed, agitated and shocked. And prepare to see a brilliant work of cinematic art.

70
The Hollywood Reporter
Duane Byrge
In this deep probe into modern-day medicine, the old guy is shuttled from hospital to hospital in a surreal, horrifying ordeal of errors, missed diagnoses and institutional malaise. At two hours and 34 minutes, we, seemingly, also endure his agony -- part of this Romanian film's power and, also, its Achilles heel.

67
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is hopelessly depressing. Yet as a story of the callous impersonalization we inflict upon one another, the film is timeless.

63
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
If Lazarescu's experience is typical in the former Soviet bloc, democracy hasn't done much to humanize the bureaucracy.

60
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Needlessly long, visually drab and not just a foreign-language film, with English subtitles, but a film that's ostensibly foreign to our experience. That said, there are compelling reasons to see it.
38
New York Post
Kyle Smith
It's supposed to be about a Kafkaesque experience. Instead, it IS a Kafkaesque experience. Why are we here? Is everything absurd? Is anyone in charge?


The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 23 User Votes
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