THIS MOVIE IS NOT A COMEDY!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!
Why is this movie in the top 50 comedy movies on IMDB? Like I said in the title this movie is not a comedy it is a social satire or a tragedy but it sure isn't a comedy
shareI agree with you, I didn't see the film as a comedy. The only thing barely resembling any kind of humor was the sarcastic lines from the smart ass doctors.
It was a powerful and dark depiction of life in and around hospitals. I felt bad for the patient, bad for the nurse and I even felt bad for the doctors, as the system and the workload made them rough, harsh, offensive and discriminatory.
The movie felt too real to me to laugh about it, but maybe it's because I'm Romanian, maybe other people see it differently.
Probably, but sad.
shareIt's considered a 'black comedy'. Nothing you laugh your ass off too.
shareI was laughing my arse off, but then I've got a sick sense of humour.
sharewho laught at this movie i don't understand. but the producers selled it like a comedy. you saw the poster for the movie, it did not look like the movie at all.
for same obscure reason the people involved with this movie wanted us to think it's a comedy before we actually saw it.
I do think marketing the film as a comedy was a mistake, given the general understanding of the word "comedy" in a modern context; a degraded context. Yet it is a VERY black comedy. Adam Sandler will not being doing a remake...
I read Doestoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" a few years back, and I swear it was the funniest book I've ever read: this sort of comedy is akin to absurdism, akin to "Kafkaism": if one does laugh it is because there is literally nothing else left to do. Sustained frustration is a form of comedy.
While the overall premise of this movie is not funny, it is filled, from front to back with comedy that only a Romanian (or someone who has lived in Romania) would get. From what's playing on the TV in the backgroud to his answer when the nurse asks him if he eats a normal diet, it is riddled with humor, all bathed in cultural context.
shareI realized this was a black comedy and still failed to find any dark humor.
I would love to understand the cultural humor in this film. Would you care to elaborate more on various exaples? Please.
Figuring it had something to do with social norms in Romania, I still kept wondering why neighbors, nurses and doctors were so quick to blame all Mr. Lazarescu's ills on his alcohol consumption. The film itself never caused me to realize his drinking was out of control.
On a personal level, I have worked in animal control here in the US and have had the experience of removing pets from homes in which the caretaker (owner) has passed. It's a very sad experience and very traumatic on the animals often leaving them depressed for months.
the way i see the drinking problem is this: (and yep, i'm a Romanian). Back when romania was a communist state one of the things our people borrowed from the russians was a drinking habit. russians drank because it was cold, romanians drank for various reasons. The point is that romanians drank bad alcohol, like Polar vodka, which is very close to alcohol used for sanitizing purposes, mainly because it was, and still is, very cheap. so one of the reasons people blame any kind if illness on alcohol consumption is because of the quality of the alcohol. the quantity of alcohol really doesn't have much to do with it.... in romania old men, widowers, who live alone, are thought to drink a lot (mostly not true) by their neighbors not because they do, but because if they didn't there wouldn't be anything to talk about the next day, and the next day, and the next day. and in romania, in my experience, anything can be and is blamed on alcohol consumption: oh that old man is so rude/grumpy/fat/skinny/wrinkly/confused/forgetful/nice/happy all the time/..... (you get the gist :)) YEP he must be a drunk!
hope my comment was at least a bit helpful :)
cheers
In the movie, the wife of Mr. Lazarescu's neighbor blamed his drinking problem on the way Hungarians drank (Mr. Lazarescu's deceased wife was Hungarian), a bad habit that Mr. Lazarescu passed onto his neighbor. I don't know if that's a sly reference to regional discord between the Romanians and the Hungarians. As a US citizen who never studied that part of Europe very closely, I was surprised to learn from the film that Romanian had a lot of words in common with Italian and other Romance languages (guess that's why it's called Romanian... :-). In contrast, a quick check of Wikipedia after viewing the film revealed Hungarian is quite a different language indeed, so Romania and Hungary are probably two entirely different cultures.
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