“His liver is as big as the parliament house”

Plot Summary: A paramedic (Luminita Gheorghiu) tries to get proper medical care for a seriously ill man (Ion Fiscuteanu).

Review:

Romanian director Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu makes Michael Moore’s Sicko look like a promotional film for the American health care system. Suffering from severe head and stomach pain, Mr. Lazarescu, a lonely old man living in a squalid apartment with his cats, calls an ambulance for help. By the time it finally arrives he’s taken a turn for the worse, vomiting blood and unable to stand without assistance. But this is just the beginning of his ordeal. Over the next few hours an accumulation of unfortunate circumstances will leave Lazarescu on the brink of death, the victim not only of plain bad timing (on the same night the hospitals are inundated with patients from a multi-vehicle traffic accident), but also just about every conceivable kind of medical abuse. Throughout the night he and his caring paramedic/nurse encounter one frustrating obstacle after another, from bureaucratic snags and legal snafus (one doctor, who makes Gregory House’s behavior look like the epitome of compassionate bedside manners, refuses to operate on Mr. Lazarescu because he’s unable to sign a consent form) to overworked, uncaring technicians and arrogant doctors who are seemingly more interested in exerting their authority over nurses and patients than in providing quality medical treatment.

Although there’s an undeniable element of absurdist black comedy in the way Mr. Lazarescu is poked, prodded, probed, pricked, tested, retested, undressed, re-dressed, wheeled around, picked up and laid down with about as much sensitivity and compassion as one would have for a rag doll, his ultimate fate is tragic and sad because despite being shuffled around from one overburdened and understaffed hospital to the next he never does receive the proper medical attention he desperately needs. Mr. Lazarescu’s plight represents, one would hope, an extreme (even exaggerated) case study, but the location shooting, the frequent use of long takes, the virtual aligning of screen-time with real-time, and the naturalistic performances lend a documentary-like credibility to the film, which deserves recognition for calling attention to some real problems within the health care system.  

Posted on March 10th, 2008 by Mat Viola
Filed under: Reviews