I believe that the least adequate way to receive a film based on an important book is to judge it without taking our eyes from the book pages. And to demand the screen to bring not only an embodiment of the characters and of the literature ghosts, but also the perfume of an articulate world following other laws than those of the cinema. And if somebody dares to revisit a text that another camera had already put its light
on, he takes a double risk. To that end,
Orizont, Marian Crișan`s latest film can be considered an almost educational example. I set aside one detail: the title of the film suggests an unhappy, simplistic association with the “
horizon of expectation”, a beloved phrase for some interpreters, according to which the viewers` expectations are huddled in the theory of the aesthetic reception. It is true, the viewers do expect, hope, want, but the generations expect, hope, want things differently, because the space they move in, their
horizon is different. Quite a long time separates us from
Victor Iliu`s
La moara cu noroc (1955), which enables us to accept an attempt of freeing ourselves from the tutory of the comparisons. What`s true is that some of them are impossible to avoid. The power of some shots has the effect of chiseling in stone
and from the start I will give an example: no matter how good an actor Bogdan Zsolt is in playing Lică Sămădăul, the image of the devolish
Geo Barton is crushing. There are some characters, some actors, which in time gain an aura of a Statue of the Commander. There is nothing more to be done here. You may bring an homage to the old film by means of a scene which seems to be taken from its golden frame – for instance the first dance of the newcomer Zoli with Andra (Ana from the past); the intensity of Bogdan Zsolt`s look fully wields his fascination upon the woman. As for the rest, the film works within the parameters settled by the director, within the frames of a free adaptation, based on Ioan Slavici`s book (as the credits let us know), within the frames of a translation of the action and of the characters to the nowadays world. Though even from the beginning there is a discussion about money (which is so incriminated in the short story and also in Iliu`s film version), during the small gathering of the Transylvanian family that administer a mountain chalet of a Dutch owner, the feeling that the viewer has from the very start is that of foreboding the evil, of a diffused restlessness which became fear, a suspicion which is very hard to cast away. We are no longer on a puszta in the Arad county, but in a mountain area up in the North of Ardeal, at the crossing of some roads that are just perfect for illegal logging. The chalet called
Orizont, isolated as it is, makes us think of the Motel Bates from
Psycho (of course there are different
proportions and a different style). Cristian Lolea`s music which takes us up and down, according to the film rhythm, also has the hitchcockian echoes of Bernard Herrman. We care less about the man and wife trying to gain more money, just like many other people in our days, working abroad, but more about their relationships. Lucian is the grumpy, sullen man who hardly looks at the person who is next to him, answering in monosyllables or in disgust (the wonderful grumpy Andras Hathazi that we know from
Morgen). His wife – apparently well adapted to the new place, rushes among tables, from the kitchen to the serving room, in fact longing for another horizon. We often catch her gazing out of the window, in her thoughts far away.
Oleg Mutu, the director of photography, shoots her the way only he knows how to do it, in a way we have the feeling that we can guess
Rodica Lazăr`s character`s most inner thoughts. It is through that window that she saw Zoli for the first time; until that moment he had been just a name in a question asked by his men (matching the swineherds from the short story): “Hasn`t Zoli passed by here?”
The repeating of the question adds to the whole restlessness ammunition. Lucian will have to accept him as the true master of that area, one of the small speculators of the local illegal logging mafia. The new Sămădău says about himself: “I am Zoli. I want to know who comes here, who leaves, if there are any signs on the logs, they are mine.” It is clear the Evil settled in. From this point onward, even if the film somehow follows the narrative line of the short story, without surprises, concentrating for a while on making money, then on Lucian`s need to get rid of the intruder (he clumsily tries to turn him on to the police), the film plays its best card on the thriller scenes, when the protagonist leaves his wife alone at home. As suspense lovers, we know what will happen. We would want the man to race his car, in order to get quicker to the crime scene. He will find an empty bedroom, Zoli sleeping in another room and Andra, in a mess, smoking by the window. A Desdemona who knows of herself she`s not presumed guilty, but plain guilty. There`s no connection to Slavici, to that “Don`t kill me, Ghiță!”, to Iliu.
Marian Crișan imagines another crime, brutal, Zoli`s slaughtering, burning the room of the presumed sin and the running away of the husband and wife who are now accomplices, their sneaking in among the people that came to the Easter Vigil. We can say it`s a debatable ending, but it`s also open.