Radu Jude’s cruel, cunning “Aferim!,” a 35mm black-and-white Western set in the feudal Romania of 1835, is set in motion by a runaway Roma slave, and the moral clash that ensues in the episodic road-movie structure is no less pertinent in modern times. A garrulous, racist bounty hunter (Teodor Corban, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” “12:08 East of Bucharest”), always with the aphorisms, suggests a cruder, crueler version of a Tarantino blabbermouth, if you can believe it. Jude keeps his camera at judicious distance, but its grit sets it apart from the stern minimalism of most contemporary Romanian filmmaking. (“Aferim” is Ottoman Turkish for “Bravo!” or “Attaboy!” and it’s as grimly ironic an expression as “Bravo!” is in contemporary Greece.) With Mihai Comanoiu, Toma Cuzin, Alexandru Dabija, Alexandru Bindea. 108m. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
Medium Cruel: When Memory Passes My father's recent death made me think not so much of my own mortality as the mortality of memory, both institutional and personal.
