Absolutely the worst movie.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu has been described as "a black comedy". It is dark but there's nothing funny about an old man's trip through the 8th circle of hell represented by Romania's socialized health system. We're with him every excruciating second as a platoon of nurses and doctors pass the buck on his care until it is too late. A real heroine is an ambulance nurse who suffers every indignity along with the old man. Her matter-of fact exit after it is clear he won't survive is heartbreaking; just another day in an overburdened health system.I wouldn't advise anyone over 50 to see this film. It is tediously long and casts a cool eye on all that is depressing about getting old. Just one example: the doctors and nurses almost without exception upbraid the old man for his drinking, one reason they were careless in their assessments of his condition.The medical consensus is that he was just an old drunk who refused to take care of himself. Temperance zeal is apparently alive and well in Romania. This is one of those movies which you suffer through but it lingers long after the last credits roll. So opposite the movies you enjoy while viewing but forget the moment you leave the theater.

A near-three hour film about the lonely death of a cantankerous old drunk, and the failings of the Romanian health service, may not sound much like fun. But 'The Death of Mr. Lazarescu' has been called a black comedy, and, although that's pushing it (the comedy is really very dark indeed), superb naturalistic acting infuses this sad tale with a real emotional kick. Some of what we see bears resemblance to the themes of U.S. police show 'The Wire'; that a key part of the job of underfunded public servants is denying access to the service that is nominally being provided; and how those who work in such a system dehumanise themselves in order to survive. But thanks to the brilliant performances on offer here, we also see faint glimmers of surviving decency in almost all of even the superficially wost of those Mr. Lazarescu is unfortunate enough to encounter on his last journey. For those of us who live in richer countries than Romania, we may have reason to hope that our own ends are not quite so grim; but this is a universal story, powerfully told.

For anyone who has made a trip to or has accompanied a loved one to the emergency room, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" may be too realistic to bear.A few years ago, my family called the ambulance for one of our relatives. He was having vague back pain -- we couldn't get him to communicate with us about it. He didn't want to go to the hospital, but his pain was too great for him not to. He is an alcoholic, and to this day lives under the assumption that none of us know he's an alcoholic, so I think his fear of the hospital had somewhat to do with the fear that his "secret" would be exposed. We ended up in a living hell of smug doctors, each with a different diagnosis of his condition, but who were all in agreement that the patient should be treated like dirt because of his addiction. If he wasn't going to care about his own health, they seemed to think, then why should they? So needless to say, despite the fact that it takes place in Romania, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" hit frightfully close to home for me, as it's about a lonely, alcoholic man and his nighttime trip into the purgatory of emergency-room bureaucracy. The foreign setting aside, this film could have taken place in the USA and been no different. Nobody has time for Mr. Lazarescu, everyone has a different theory as to what is wrong with him, the nurses are more interested in making sure paperwork is filled out than they are in taking care of the living, breathing human being suffering -- and perhaps dying -- on the stretcher in front of them. In one scene, the doctors insult and belittle the ambulance nurse when she tries to offer her own assessment of Mr. Lazarescu's condition, holding their advanced schooling over and against her. We don't learn much about Mr. Lazarescu, and so we see events occur from the perspective of this paramedic who takes charge of him and carts him from one hospital to the next in a desperate attempt to find one that will treat him. To her, Mr. Lazarescu is a job, yet she's the closest thing to a caring relative he has, so cold and indifferent is the rest of the health care world.This film is astonishing in its meticulous detail, and it's hard to believe it's not a documentary, something out of the world of Fredrick Wiseman. Most scenes are filmed in long takes, the camera standing back at an objective distance simply capturing the whirl of human activity taking place around it. The acting is amazing, for the very reason that no one seems to be acting. It's a deeply unsettling film; we know Mr. Lazarescu will likely die -- from cancer if not from the surgery he's about to undergo when the film closes, and anyway, the title tells us as much. But we don't see him die in the film -- the last scene is of him being washed, shaved and dressed for surgery, a human being reduced to a slab of living flesh on a table, robbed of even his last shred of dignity, while no one appears to care. Somehow, that lack of closure is one of the most unsettling things in the film; it captures the feeling one has when you've finally gotten your loved one to the hospital and all you can do is wait, not sure whether or not you're going to see him alive again.Grade: A

The Death of Mr Lazarescu is a film that challenges. It is long. 153 minutes long. It has the weighty subject matter that the title suggests. A man of 63 who lives alone with his 3 cats and the comfort of his home made booze is taken from hospital to hospital where busy doctors use the little power they have to make sure they are not responsible for his care. I had expected it to be about alienation and a poor society with a poverty of care. But what was striking was the opposite. One must fear for the Romanians about to become part of the Mighty European Union. This man lives in dowdy circumstances; his home reminded me of my childhood home with tacky plastic table cloths and bland wall tiles. Even the cats are indifferent to him. But there were neighbours; they go into each other's homes; they offer food; they argue over the best course of help. The Nurse who takes him from Hospital to Hospital shows real caring and sees beyond the smell of alcohol that creates the first pre-judgement for everyone. Those rivalries between the different medical professions is universal I'd assume. I found this a tough film to watch. If you've sat with someone dying you'll know how hard it is. The only thing I did wonder throughout was why someone who has had a headache for days would wear a woolly hat in bed?