crappy movie and i regretted staying up to watch it.
shareYes it was miserable but it was not 'crappy' as you put. Its miserable because it is a cynical look at society and no one cared to see beyond Mr Lazarescu's addiction to drink till it was too late.
"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".
I too found the movie quite unpleasant to watch ...and at the same time well-crafted. That was also my reaction to "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days", which came out of Romania a couple years later. (I started to see that one in a theater, but walked out before it was over. Whereas I saw this one on a DVD at home, and so could keep pausing it for breaks then coming back to it.)
The rather dysfunctional medical system (even though each individual "does their job" quite well), the lack of appropriate social supports for older citizens whose relations with their relatives are strained, and the push-pull relationships of neighbors, all seemed uncomfortably familiar to me.
It wasn't supposed to be funny. Not a comedy.
shareI learned more later:
The people that made the movie (director, actors, etc.) intended it -as you say- not as any sort of comedy but as a damning indictment of the reality they lived with. Although they handled -or at least planned for- distribution in many places, they left "English" distribution as simply a hole to be completely contracted out later and not preplanned at all in any way. The chosen English distributor was expected to supply the subtitles and even a complete advertising campaign entirely independent of anything the original did. The eventual English distributor chose to reorient the movie as a "black comedy" and did indeed sell it that way. The director was not very happy about it, but apparently didn't have a lot of options and so somewhat reluctantly "approved" that plan and never said much about it publicly.
So yes the movie wasn't supposed to be funny. BUT it was sold as a comedy in some countries.