The greatest movie ever!

Deeper than the descriptions

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

The tense relationship and the difficult objective dilemma have been relatively positively resolved, so the end of the story seems to give the audience a sigh of relief. But from another perspective, the boundaries between morality and rules are increasingly blurred. The placement of each of the small events in the script is just right, but the overall look is still a bit of a cliché. The disillusionment of a generation and the reincarnation of the second generation appear to be somewhat cramped in this moral drama. Personally feel that the indifferent middle-aged dilemma has nothing to do with the times, and the depiction of this private state is precisely the best of the film.

In a small Romanian town, Romeo (Adrien Titeini) is a local doctor who is hell-bent on ensuring his teenage daughter Eliza (Maria-Victoria Dragus) excels in her final high-school exams in order to be accepted at a university in the U.K. He is even willing to cross legal and ethical boundaries to make this happen after Eliza faces a crisis shortly before her exams.Director/writer Christian Mungiu seems to have a knack for courageously exposing his home country's culture of corruption and the moral dilemmas this causes for average citizens - especially when these folks are in a quandary and "taking the high road" would not likely get them what they want and need. In "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days", the story revolved around arranging an illegal abortion during the Communist era; in "Graduation" (which takes place in the current time), it involves Romeo's insistence that his only child must leave corrupt Romania in order to have a decent life and future."Graduation" begins quite well in introducing the audience to interesting characters and how they respond to the corruption in their midst. The middle part is even more intriguing as Romeo's moral compass goes so downhill that he is becoming what he once condemned. It is evident he's acted this way before but not at this level.There are two key scenes in this section in which Romeo defends his actions. One involves an argument with his wife; the other with Eliza. During the dispute with his wife (played by Lia Bugnar), he argues how much she benefited from his smaller moral slips in the past even if she wouldn't have acted the same way herself. His argument is so convincing that even the viewer could agree with him in a very uncomfortable way.The final segment does injustice to the beginning and the middle. It seems to go in various unnecessary directions and fails to continue the momentum built earlier. But "Graduation" is still a film worth seeing. It includes universal themes such as well-meaning parents over-planning their children's future plus a challenge to the belief that "the grass is always greener" somewhere else. And of course, the saying "O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive" is well played out in the narrative.

It's probably better to wait for Netflix on this, a pretty good—but not THAT good—film set in the post-Ceaușescu era, where Eliza is about to realize the dream of her parents: escape from gritty, grubby, backward Romania to a real future in civilized England. She has tentatively won a college scholarship there and needs only to pass her upcoming high-school final to confirm it, but a shattering sexual assault has left her in no condition to take the test, let alone focus sufficiently to pass it. School bureaucrats' refusal to allow a postponement means the scholarship could be lost. The only solution lies in the sordid game of cronyism, bribes, favors and under-table, back-scratch deals that has long been a necessary coping mechanism for people under repressive regimes. Thus the moral crisis for Eliza's father: he's a surgeon, not only good but honest. He won't take bribes, favors and gifts for doing his job (people think he's joking when he refuses their 'incentive money'), but can he, this one time, in these extreme circumstances, dirty his hands just a little to save his daughter's future?

Fist of all, Romanian movies are the most unique movies I've ever seen, so they deserve to be watched and talked about among those who watch. Bacalaureat (Graduation) is an example how you can make a masterpiece without extraordinary script, how you can see the very best of acting without some special dialogues, effects, etc. For those who are admirers of Hollywood this is not a perfect thing to watch. There is nothing special in this movie, nothing extraordinary, uncommon... However Bacalaureat is one of the most beautiful thing I've seen during the last few years. Romanians should be teachers to the other directors. I'm not sure if Romanians should say "thanks" to communism and isolation during the last century, I am not sure whether this is their way to express the feelings that they've had in the past. I am sure that this movie is a diamond among overambitious titles.