AURORA
Written & Directed by Cristi Puiu
Produced by Anca Puiu & Bobby Paunescu
Released by the Cinema Guild
Romanian with English subtitles
Romania. 181 min. Not Rated
With Cristi Puiu, Clara Voda (Gina), Valeria Seciu, Luminita Gheorghiu, Catrinel Dumitrescu, Gelu Colceag & Valentin Popescu
 

Six cameramen may have worked on Aurora, but there’s a similarity to every scene, almost all of which follow Viorel—played by the director Christi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, 2005)—over the course of several days undertaking a series of apathetic, offhand murders. Puiu himself references direct cinema, an attempt at catching the feel of impartial reality, in this case to understand the particular psychology of a serial murderer. What’s so interesting is that at the heart of this three-hour film, which premiered at Cannes 2010, is a character that is never actually unaware of the camera. This is the type of film that often gives the impression of a fixed frame, but if you’ll notice, the camera actually moves relentlessly, covering Viorel’s mysterious action back and forth across the Bucharest suburbs. Even when it’s deliberately unclear what he’s up to, he goes about his dark business fastidiously, and almost flirts with the lens as he enters and exits rooms, cars, and buildings. The two (character and subject) are in a constant dance.

Woody Allen, a far more self-deprecating protagonist, occasionally found an disinterested cameraman, who chose not even to follow Allen across a room. Not so Puiu. This film mostly forgoes even dark humor, taking its central theme quite seriously. It won’t keep you from coming out of the theater in a pretty low place. Aurora is, after all, about a remorseless serial killer whose victims are people he knows, yet his grievances are little known. Alan Clarke’s 1989 short film for the BBC, “Elephant,” followed a wordless gunman as he stalked around town shooting passersby. Imagine it extending to the moment when he arrives back home to his family and you’ll about have the feel of Aurora. Whether the details of the murders even matter is something that both Puiu and I seem to be in agreement on—they do not. Viorel is remorseless in a “whiteness of the whale,” lack of a soul, people-are-evil-at-the-core-of-their-existence way. While Lazarescu succeeded hugely because of its sarcastic tone and memorably low opinion of human nature, this latest installment of the post-Soviet/post-dictator Romanian experience could make Lars von Trier feel uplifting.

When the details of Viorel’s plot make themselves clear, there is a sense of thrill. However intellectual this filmmaking is, it’s really a suspense film. There are few similarities between Hitchcock and the Romanian New Wave brand (in fact, I feel Romanian films have been deliberately moving away from that type of over-planned, meticulous decision-making, using one lens to cover an entire scene where Hitchcock would use three, for instance), but they should attract a similar following. Like the master himself, Puiu and his contemporaries withhold information just as carefully, understanding how to hit an audience on the head and in the gut simultaneously. Conversely, the audience is sometimes provided with information that the characters don’t have (inducing the “don’t go in that room!” reaction). As in Hitchcock, you’ll often recall how affecting a scene was, despite not having realized it at the time.

Buying Puiu’s bottom-up viewpoint isn’t necessarily a requirement, but just be prepared to consider it. Viorel is not a likeable character, and Puiu is not a feel-good filmmaker. I prefer to think of him as a clinician, dispassionately interested in his subjects for their particular details, and not out of any wish to live the lives they do. I suppose you gotta hope the writer, director, and star of a film about a brutal murderer is only in it for the material. Michael Lee
July 1, 2011