The Romanian Cinema of Nationalism: Historical Films as Propaganda and Spectacle by Onoriu Colăcel (review)

Onoriu Colăcel's The Romanian Cinema of Nationalism: Historical Films as Propaganda and Spectacle fills a critical gap in book-length scholarship on Romanian cinema by demonstrating the cultural and aesthetic value of the Romanian 'historicals' that dominated screens during the communist reign of Nicolae Ceaușescu (1965-89). Widely dismissed by scholars as pure propaganda films unworthy of serious textual analysis, these blockbuster productions, Colăcel convincingly argues, fostered a sense of community and belonging for Romanian audiences through shooting techniques such as the long take that effectively embedded spectators in the spectacle of their history. Colăcel does not necessarily seek to vault these works into the Romanian canon. He proposes the term 'heritage film' as a more effective alternative to the propaganda label that has haunted them in the post-communist era

Textual analysis of Romanian propaganda spectacles is rare amidst the cascade of scholarship on Romanian cinema brought about by the new wave in the mid-2000s. Dominique Nasta covers the politics of production during the communist era in Contemporary Romanian Cinema: The History of an Unexpected Miracle (2013), but stops short of analyzing the artistic and cultural merit of the historicals in her authoritative study of Romanian film history. Florentina C. Andreescu brilliantly articulates the trauma of the transition to modernity in Romania in From Communism to Capitalism: Nation and State in Romanian Cultural Production (2013), but her book does not offer case studies of communist era works. Doru Pop provides incisive case studies of the artistic masterpieces of the communist period in Romanian New Wave Cinema: An Introduction (2014), but heritage films do not figure into his analysis. The Romanian Cinema of Nationalism fills the previously glaring gap of scholarship on the films that remain the most popular in the history Romanian cinema.

The first chapter orients us to the Romanian production and consumption culture during its post-Soviet period of national identity reconstruction. The newborn communist state recognized the importance of cinema as a tool for furthering essential ideals about ethnic pride to a wide and willing audience. The second chapter is a case study of Lucian Bratu's Tudor (1962), based on the 18^th century Romanian revolutionary hero Tudor Vladimrescu, which the government promoted as "the first widescreen spectacular from Romania" [36]. Tudor successfully inaugurated an era of historical epics that was sustained through an anti-auteur approach coordinated by the state in order to cultivate a genre of historicals based on textbooks in the schools.

Chapter 3 is the shortest in the book but it is altogether the most fascinating. It treats the new wave that never ended but evolved into what is known internationally as 'contemporary Romanian cinema'. It is defined by long take shooting. The average shot lengths of Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) and Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) both exceed 80 seconds. Corneliu Porumboiu holds shots nearly as long in 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006) and Police, Adjective (2009). Colăcel's assertion that the long take has always figured prominently in Romanian cinema is a striking intervention. According to Colăcel, "Stylistically, the (fake) long take and the (extreme) long shot-deep focus techniques were the most obvious choice of the heritage genre . . . The Romanian identity on camera is delineated by what appear to be real-time shots. Supposedly, on-screen action happens in real time and compositions in long shot linger to allow the viewer to experience the magnitude of history" (56). This claim structures his aesthetic approach to each case study

Chapter 4, "The Dacian Legacy on Film," situates us in the period in Romanian history that bore the most fruitful lineage of "textbook heroes." The Roman conquest of Dacia, Colăcel reminds us, was the first episode in the master narrative of the communist era textbooks. Chapters 4 and 5 are comprised of case studies of...