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You are here: Home Leisure Arts & Culture Comic communism: Ceausescu, the pig and a tale of two hats

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29/10/2009Comic communism: Ceausescu, the pig and a tale of two hats

Comic communism: Ceausescu, the pig and a tale of two hats A new film by acclaimed director Cristian Mungiu pokes fun at the absurdities of life in communist-era Romania.

It was a red carpet reception befitting a major head of state and Romania's official photographers were out in force as dictator Nicolae Ceausescu welcomed the visiting French president.

But when Ceausescu's Communist Party officials examined the pictures, they were aghast: Their revered leader appeared short compared to France's Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

Worse, while Giscard was wearing a hat, Ceausescu was carrying his, and aides thought it made him look like he was begging.

The images were doctored for the official party daily: A few extra centimetres were added to Ceausescu and a hat was put on his head. The problem? No one thought to airbrush out the hat he was holding in his hands.

When the mistake was spotted, police were sent across the country charged with securing every copy of the paper and its front-page image of the despot with two hats.

The date was March 1979. Welcome to life in Ceausescu's Romania.



Revisiting an era

Twenty years after the collapse of his brutal regime, tales such as the hat episode have been revived in a new film by acclaimed director Cristian Mungiu that pokes fun at the absurdities of life in communist-era Romania.

Mungiu -- the darling of Cannes two years ago when he took the festival's coveted Palme d'Or -- recalls what made people laugh even as they suffocated under Ceausescu's autocratic leadership.

It's the flip side of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, his grim story of a woman trying to procure an illegal abortion under the same regime, which took Cannes by storm.

This new compilation of six short films by young directors, called Tales from the Golden Age, has comic plots that range from an exploding Christmas pig to the contradictions of toeing the party line.

In its satire, it recalls the 2003 German film Goodbye Lenin, another look-back-and-laugh film in which a devoted son attempts to hide the collapse of the Berlin Wall after his party stalwart mother wakes up from a coma.

Tales from the Golden Age, which was part of the official selection at Cannes in May, borrows the phrase used by Ceausescu's propaganda chiefs to describe his Romania, and is the second in a trilogy that opened with 4 Months.

It helped us survive

But don't expect a nostalgic trip back in time.

"What this film does is try to bring back the humour that helped us survive through that period," Mungiu, 41, said.

When he began work on the trilogy, "the plan was to start with the stories people used to tell while standing in line for hours to buy God knows what. But then I realized it gave the wrong idea about the system."

So he made 4 Months first. But while Tales from the Golden Age invites its audience to laugh, Mungiu said it wasn't his intention to portray a more benign version of daily life under communism.

"It's a different point of view," he said. "After all, I started by dealing with the dark side of that period."

Tales from the Golden Age - Amintiri din epoca de aur (2009) © Studio / Produzent

The stories in Tales were directed by Mungiu, based on his own screenplay, and four other directors -- Ioana Uricaru, Hanno Hoefer, Razvan Marculescu and Constantin Popescu – who are seen as the new generation of Romanian cinema.

In one segment, a couple buy a pig on the black market just before Christmas but are at a loss about how to slaughter it in their apartment without their neighbours finding out.

They decide to gas it -- only for the hog to explode in their faces.

Queuing in the midnight hour

Life under Ceausescu was grim. Food shortages were severe and there were frequent power blackouts.

Queues were a daily chore, even for basics such as bread and milk. People would wake up at dead of night just to join a line in front of a shop if they heard something -- anything -- had been delivered the previous evening.

"Everybody should see this movie,” said Silviu Mandache, 72, outside a Bucharest cinema. “Most of all the young people or else they may believe those who say communism was good. There was no food, we had to queue up for everything. And then there were the lies about what was going on in the country."

Andrei, 23, said the film brought familiar tales to life: "My grandparents used to tell me stories like these ones, so it was quite funny to see them on screen."

Ceausescu ruled Romania with an iron fist from 1965 until his execution at the age of 71 on Christmas Day, 1989, after a popular revolution.

"To youngsters, this is just a comedy," Mungiu said, "to adults it's like a trigger of memories. Some, mostly Romanians who emigrated years ago, have tears in their eyes even before the movie starts."

Tales from the Golden Age - Amintiri din epoca de aur (2009) © Studio / Produzent

As everybody has their own stock of anecdotes about communism, Mungiu has opened a website (www.amintiridinepocadeaur.ro) so people can share them and promised a prize for the best one.

The filmmaker hopes the comedy will encourage Romanians back to the cinema as attendance rates have fallen dramatically over the past few years.

Tales from the Golden Age is going on release in 25 countries, including Britain and the United States.

Mihaela Rodina/AFP/Expatica


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