Love of your Fellow Man

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is by far the best new film I have seen this year. An old man - Lazarescu Dante Remus - is feeling bad. He has had a head-ache for four days; his stomach hurts; he can't keep food down. He calls an ambulance, but no one comes. He has a bad life - he lives alone, with his cats, he has run out of food; he drinks; he has a sister living in another town, but they are quarrelling - they nag him for money; he has a daughter in Canada who talks to his sister but not him. He suffers. He goes next door to borrow painkillers from the neighbors, and in the middle of their lectures, their quarrelling, he starts vomiting blood and can't stand up - so they call an ambulance. The ambulance arrives, and he is prodded and questioned, lectured for drinking, and finally totters off with the paramedic, begging his neighbor, as he goes, to feed his cats. On the TV, meanwhile, half in the background, we hear a news report about a truck hitting a bus full of tourists. His death sentence. He will go to four hospitals before the night is over - the first will be full of bus accident victims, and will send him elsewhere for a CT scan, after harangueing him for drinking. The second will do the tests, diagnose the problem - a blood clot on the brain - and tell him he needs immediate surgery: but they will be full of bus crash victims too. The third hospital will earn a special place in hell. The fourth hospital will operate, but by then he will well on his way to another world.

It is heartbreaking, funny, a tour of hell with a sympathetic guide (the paramedic) and a fascinating array of people. The film has been billed as an indictment of the Romanian medical profession - it is, though it's more than that. No one treats poor Lazarescu Dante Remus with any decency - they bully him, lecture him incessantly for his drinking, blame him for his troubles, or just ignore him, treat him like a car in the shop. The neighbors and his family as much as the doctors. But for all that, most of the people, when push comes to shove, do what they are supposed to do. The neighbors whine about his drinking, his cats, the mess in his flat, but they give him medicine, they bring him food, they try to help. The doctors and nurses are rude and arrogant, but most of them do their jobs. When they see what is wrong, they try to fix it. (Though one of the themes is that most of the people who would help him can't: the neighbors don't know what to do with him; the paramedic can’t really fix anything, and her treatment might make things worse; the neurologists who figure out what is wrong with him can't do anything, they have nowhere to operate. There is an odd scene here, at the second hospital. The doctors say he needs immediate surgery, but their ORs are full. The paramedic and her friend the nurse try to convince them to let him stay - they see that he has been dragged from pillar to post too long, it is becoming cruel - but the doctors know he can’t wait for morning - it's an odd argument.) There are exceptions of course - at the third hospital, an intern and then the doctor are rude to the paramedic, arrogant, sarcastic, and completely disdainful of the old man. They try to get him to sign a waiver for his surgery - but by this time, he is very far gone. All he hears is the word "paralyzed" and he panics and starts refusing everything. The paramedic tries to tell them he in incompetent, but they are so against her, they won't listen. They tell her to drive him around for an hour until he is in a coma, then they will operate. It's a particularly vicious moment. But outside that scene - the film may be a towering denunciation of the human race, but not so much of its individuals. Who, whine and gripe and play politics though they may, do, basically, do their jobs, under very difficult circumstances.

All of this, anyway, is shot in almost documentary style (comparisons to Frederick Wiseman are apt), simple, direct, mostly hand held camera, long takes, long stretches in almost real time, with nothing much going on (we see most of the rides between hospitals in real time, nothing going on, the old man dying, the paramedic watching, taking her gall bladder medicine, sometimes making small talk with the driver). Restrained acting (though some pretty obnoxious behavior), lots of digressions (following, for a moment or two, the plight of another patient - one woman trying, I think, to hustle drugs, complaining about her prescription, another couple talking about whether their vacation would constitute strain), and lots of fairly legitimate sounding medical talk. This - the systems and routines of the medical profession - is what comes in for the most abuse. Lazarescu keeps being sent along to new doctors - who insist on starting from the beginning, asking the same questions, making the same examinations, drawing the same conclusions - he's drunk, it's his liver... It's the arrogance - not listening, not paying attention to what they see and hear, that damns the ones who are damned. The ones who act do what they are supposed to - listen, look, ask for what they don't know.

It all adds up. It is intensely sad - the lonely old fool, his rotten life, his cats, who he loves though no one else does, sinking into oblivion. He starts feisty and defiant, arguing with the neighbors, with the paramedic when they try to cram him into a dinky looking van of an ambulance, the doctors who tell him he brought it on himself drinking - but he falls apart, a piece at a time. It starts at his flat - he falls - and after that, can't walk well. Then he can't stand. He starts falling asleep, and every time he wakes he is less coherent. And do it goes. And the film watches, him, and the people around him, doing good or bad things, paying attention to detail, patient, insisting on the details, the corners of our lives, the details of a room, or the way a person sits. Its love of its characters is evident, even in its refusal to absolve them for their failures, while never slighting them on their achievements.