This is How Movies Should Be Made

The greatest movie ever made..!

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Lonely, retired Mr. Lazarescu becomes ill one night. His neighbors call an ambulance, and he's taken on a bizarre tour of Bucharest's hospitals, each of which shuffles him over to the next.I can understand the negative reviews here. By necessity, THE DEATH of MR. LAZARESCU is bleak, repetitive, and confined in settings. I can also understand its being a labeled a comedy, though it's one of the very darkest sort. While definitely not for those who want fast action, sophisticated effects, and/or just something really fun and uplifting, the acting is so natural and the cinematography so plainly real that DML becomes one of those films that will completely immerse a willing audience.As a satire of medical care for the poor, aged, and unconnected, there's nothing more effective. Using simple narrative, it shows what so many recent documentaries have merely tried to show. While set in a small Eastern European nation, it's likely to strike a chord just about anywhere. Though non-Romanian audiences may have to do some quick look-ups and online translations, there is clever symbolism--more subtle but just as apt as the name of the protagonist--in the names of the doctors, nurses, and facilities.

The story is very simple. Mr. Lazarescu, an older man, has been suffering from bad headaches for several days and finally feels the need to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital. Three times hospitals refer him to other hospitals with the excuses of being too full, not having enough staff, or not having the right equipment. When Mr. Lazarescu arrives at hospital B from hospital A, the first comment at hospital B is to ask why he was brought there, since hospital A is the better place for him. It is only through the persistence of the nurse in the ambulance that Mr. Lazarescu is not just put on a gurney and left to suffer and die.A major challenge of the movie is that Lazarescu is not a real sympathetic character--he is an unkempt alcoholic living alone with nobody who much cares for him. He loves his cats and seems to make an effort with an unresponsive sister. but a daughter in Canada is, for reasons unknown, totally out of the picture. We never know how Lazarescu wound up in his sorry state, but in many ways this is crucial to the power of the film, since it forces you to address the question of the value of each individual life, no matter how ordinary. You can understand how easy it would be to dismiss this seemingly insignificant man. Indeed, most of the health care providers tended to view Lazarescu as a problem that they would just as soon not deal with, and from their perspective of being overworked and overwhelmed and having to fill out multiple forms, you could see where they were coming from. But you keep being brought back to the realization that here is a human being in pain who needs help and, except for the nurse, that is not a big concern of those whose job it is to provide that help.I was sobered by the comment from the doctor who said that he needed Lazarescu's signature in order to operate unless he was incapable of signing, so they might want to drive him around for awhile until he was incapable.The questions brought up about health care are enough to drive you crazy. How much care should a country provide for each of its citizens in light of the fact that doing everything for everybody will ultimately bankrupt the country? I think Lazarescu would have gotten better care in the United States, since hospitals are required to admit patients to the emergency room, but unless significant reforms are put in place, it is only a matter of time where the situation in the U.S. will be just as portrayed in Romania as in this movie.It's hard to watch this without thinking that someday you may be in Lazarescu's situation. The line from the movie that still haunts me was from the doctor who commented that Lazarescu's hematoma should be operated on so he could then go home and later die of colon cancer. I am sure that if I were in Lazarescu's place, I would want the pain to go away. But so I could live to die a painful death over the next year? I found any humor to be had here to be very black.

In the first 5 or 10 minutes you might find it boring because apparently nothing happens however once you've passed that you'll realize that progressively things get worse and the situation degenerates rapidly. The only description I could give for this movie is "Reality...live and uncensored" , during the whole 2 hours and a half I had the sensation that I was actually there witnessing the whole situation somehow passively involved in the unfolding of the events due to the fact that the actors played the characters exactly as they should ,with an effortless talent and the scenes were filmed flawlessly. Having recently experienced a situation similar to that of Mr.Lazarescu I must say that this movie can't get any closer to reality, every single second of this movie was an accurate portrayal of cold hard reality where under the influence of numerous factors you end up in a not-so-good state and the blame falls on everybody not on just one particular person or situation. There would be a small problem for people who don't understand romanian cause there are many idioms however I think that can be solved with a good subtitle. Over all this is a must see which I recommend to everybody cause it engenders many questions and makes you meditate on the condition of us humans, this may seem pretty far off the subject but if you give it a second thought maybe it isn't...

I just want to respond the first comment (or at least the comment marked as "most useful"), saying that this is not a movie about reality on a post-Comunist country. This is a movie about reality in countries that don't belong to the first Word. I come from Argentina, and my country has never been run as a communist country. Every president we had might have had politics different than other countries, but certainly, never even *near* communism. And that *happens*. It happens *every single day*. Do you know why I didn't enjoyed that movie? Because I couldn't stop thinking that at least half of the population in my country has no chance but to assist to public hospitals and suffer that luck *every day*. I'm lucky I belong to a middle class that can afford private hospitals, but as I see on the news, people go to hospitals at five in the morning to ask for an appointment with a doctor. And I see how doctors who work at public hospitals are frustrated when they can't help their patients because hospital doesn't have the appropriate equipment. It's really sad. It's not post-communism. It's reality at third word countries (and third word doesn't always mean we are from the African country where they are all starving, cause we are doing just fine. We're not that bad.) And the reason these countries have this issues is because, well, like you've seen our economy minister saying it on TV, the big boys are trying to keep us down.I do hope that The Death of Mr. Lazarescu has changed something in our head. It's not just a movie, It's almost a documentary... Because i can assure you that is a real story. Not a reality show, a real story.