Sier­aneva­da – first look review

There’s a famous 1972 film by Luis Buñuel called The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie. It focus­es on a group of well-heeled jet set­ter types whose plans to embrace com­mon civil­i­ty and sit down to eat a meal togeth­er are always foiled at the very last sec­ond by some far­ci­cal inter­rup­tion which they absolute­ly have to attend to. Where that film was unequiv­o­cal­ly framed as with­er­ing satire, the new work by Roman­ian direc­tor, Cristi Puiu, plays out a near iden­ti­cal sce­nario, though here it’s in the mode of hard, ram­bling, fas­tid­i­ous­ly detailed realism.

Over the course of three pun­ish­ing hours, Mimi Branescu’s Lary plays the rea­son­able and unas­sum­ing con­nec­tive sinew of a fam­i­ly join­ing togeth­er (under bare­ly-con­cealed duress) to mourn the pass­ing of Uncle Emil. This com­mu­nal rite does not adhere to any log­i­cal order of play, instead rolling on and on into the night as the mem­bers of this extend­ed fam­i­ly find it seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble to focus their atten­tions on the recent­ly deceased. Sim­ply put, Puiu wants to show what it’s like to be part of a fam­i­ly, and also prove that inti­ma­cy can breed con­tempt just as eas­i­ly as it can an almost deco­rous brand of back-slap­ping fond­ness. The film suc­ceeds on this level.

Sier­aneva­da is essen­tial­ly a sin­gle frag­ment of a nev­er-end­ing daisy chain of frac­tious argu­ments. The open­ing scene sees Lary’s wife go bal­lis­tic because he pur­chas­es the incor­rect cos­tume for their daughter’s Dis­ney-themed school play. And then, with­out even notic­ing it, we segue into anoth­er argu­ment about hol­i­days, and then anoth­er about whether it’s worth stop­ping off to buy some food for break­fast. Puiu seems to believe that all human inter­ac­tion is based on sub­jec­tive antag­o­nism – in his world, two neg­a­tives make a neg­a­tive. No-one is right, no-one is wrong, every­thing is an opin­ion couched entire­ly in per­son­al expe­ri­ence. Essen­tial­ly, we’re all doomed.

For the most part the anti-dra­ma plays out in the cramped apart­ment of a wid­ow who is too wor­ried about her depressed sis­ter to show any emo­tion towards her dead hus­band. The cam­era lingers in the hall­way swerv­ing around, peek­ing in doors, catch­ing snatch­es of banal con­ver­sa­tions, glanc­ing over the shoul­ders of char­ac­ters as they whine and whinge. Aside from Lary, it’s hard to know whether Puiu has any empa­thy for these peo­ple, each being a mix­ture of self-obses­sion and ingrained igno­rance. That he would spend so much hard labour build­ing these char­ac­ters is in itself a para­dox. Why does he insist we spend time with this fam­i­ly and their pet­ty trivialities?

It’s sti­fling­ly rig­or­ous film­mak­ing, for­mi­da­ble in its own strange way, but wan­ton­ly repel­lant also. Puiu tamps down any­thing that might be con­strued as a dra­mat­ic high or low by either pulling away before the episode has end­ed, or switch­ing focus to a non-inte­gral char­ac­ter. Life is a vor­tex of despair, suf­fer­ing and bewil­der­ment, and just as some­thing that might be an answer comes into view, we blink and miss it, or we’re just too bored to notice. There’s too many peo­ple in the world so noth­ing will ever get done. Facts buf­fet against counter-facts, voic­es are raised and com­mu­ni­ca­tion is bro­ken. When things get too com­plex, the doors are there to be closed. The hell of over­heard con­ver­sa­tions is mag­ni­fied when you’re made to con­sid­er the ones you can’t hear.

At the film’s mid-point, a priest tells an anec­dote about how he once became depressed when he pon­dered whether Christ had returned to Earth and passed on unno­ticed. Puiu plays a sim­i­lar game with the mean­ing of Sier­aneva­da. He forces us to con­stant­ly ques­tion what the film is, where it’s head­ed, what state­ment it’s mak­ing (if any), why it begins and ends where it does, and what we could pos­si­bly be wait­ing for to resolve itself. It’s pos­si­bly a very monot­o­nous, mean­der­ing and non-mag­i­cal ver­sion of John Cas­savetes’ Love Streams from 1984. And, most infu­ri­at­ing­ly, what in the world could pos­si­bly be more impor­tant, more vital, more demand­ing of atten­tion than a hearty meal? Buñuel made that con­cept work, but Puiu cyn­i­cal­ly infers that we’d starve our­selves if it gained us access to the intel­lec­tu­al high ground.