Luminously photographed by Marius Panduru in the now unfashionable
Academy ratio, Romanian director Radu Jude's superb new movie "Scarred
Hearts" is based on the writings of Max Blecher and deals with the time
he spent in a sanatorium on the Black Sea. The year is 1937 and
Blecher's alter-ego is Emanuel, suffering from Pott's Disease, a form of
TB. Though not an asylum, the hospital is something of a madhouse.
Operations are performed with the minimum of anaesthetic, if any, and
the doctors have no qualms in telling the largely manhandled patients
exactly what's wrong with them and everything, including sex between the
patients, seems to be permitted. Emanuel suffers more than most but
bears it all stoically, even managing to fall in love with a former
patient, and there is a good deal of humour in the film. Lucian Teodor
Rus, making his screen debut, is excellent as Emanuel, even if he does
spend most of the film on his back and Serban Pavlu is superb as his
doctor. I'm sure for many people a two and a half hour film about
illness might seem something of an endurance test but Jude makes even
the grimmest passages seem somehow life-affirming. A wonderful picture.
Luminously photographed by Marius Panduru in the now unfashionable
Academy ratio, Romanian director Radu Jude's superb new movie "Scarred
Hearts" is based on the writings of Max Blecher and deals with the time
he spent in a sanatorium on the Black Sea. The year is 1937 and
Blecher's alter-ego is Emanuel, suffering from Pott's Disease, a form of
TB. Though not an asylum, the hospital is something of a madhouse.
Operations are performed with the minimum of anaesthetic, if any, and
the doctors have no qualms in telling the largely manhandled patients
exactly what's wrong with them and everything, including sex between the
patients, seems to be permitted. Emanuel suffers more than most but
bears it all stoically, even managing to fall in love with a former
patient, and there is a good deal of humour in the film. Lucian Teodor
Rus, making his screen debut, is excellent as Emanuel, even if he does
spend most of the film on his back and Serban Pavlu is superb as his
doctor. I'm sure for many people a two and a half hour film about
illness might seem something of an endurance test but Jude makes even
the grimmest passages seem somehow life-affirming. A wonderful picture.
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