In order for the readers of this review to fully understand my position, I need to situate myself in the picture- the historical one, not the movie. At the time of the unfolding of that story I was 2 years younger than the protagonists, a tenth grader in one of the two best high schools in my town, an avid listener of Free Europe and a constant fan of Cornel Chiriac's Metronom, to whom I owe my still present love of good music and my sentimental involvement with good, everlasting music. To this day, every 4th of March is the day I light a candle as a remembrance of that day of 1975 when he was assassinated, in Cornel's memory. Having lived through that period and the subsequent one, it came as a shock to me to read all those reviews written either by people my age, who should have lived through similar constraints and so hopefully developed a similar attitude, or by people much younger, who completely lack the accurate information and/or the desire to get it, so they express opinions just because they can, with no relevance whatsoever to the actual events. You know what they say: "Those who ignore their past are bound to relive it." Such reviewers speak about "the plot" of the film. Guys, that "plot"was our lives, the despicable politics of the communist régime to keep your head down, your mouth shut, your "eyes on the prize"- the prize in this case being educated by the system into brainwashing and believing that the socialist/ communist régime is unquestionably the best of them all. I can't blame the generation of our parents for not fighting against the oppression, though we are currently living through times in which it is fashionable to blame it all on the parents, irrespective of generation, as long as it justifies one's failure. We, in our turn, were educated in a culture of fear of the authoritoes, of the securitate services, of each other; the older generation knew it was best to beware of everyone, since you never knew whom to trust. Actually, after the revolution of December 1989, when the archives of the securitate were opened to everyone, many of us made the epic mistake of wanting to see their own record, thus finding out that their friends, relatives and often spouses were the ones who had turned them in and gave regular reports about what was spoken in their houses. The blackmail to which the protagonists are subjected, either the classmate who thus gives his family the opportunity of fleeing the socialist Romania and living in the West, or the whole class who will only sit their finals- the bac- if they agree to collaborate with the securitate indefinitely were among us- they and their parents, making a hideous crime of the fact of listening to good, international music. For a large part of the youth of those times the importance of music to keep our heads above water, to keep us functional in a drab, gloomy world full of prejudice, fear and self loathing for not being able to do anything against it will never be underlined strongly enough. Nor will be the trauma that we lived with. I am sorry for the new generations who, unless they have been educated by parents with a strong and reliable conscience, seem to be unable to appreciate the numerous freedoms which they have, not even when faced with the harsh realities of those times. Guys, ask yourselves why those teenagers were dressed in uniforms in order to go to school, why they had numbers sewn onto said uniforms like convicts in prisons, why they were listening to music in secret and writing letters to the radio stations in the West in secret, why they were abusively taken from their houses to the securitate station. Eh? Why should you complicate yourselves with such useless questions, since you've been living in a free world, enjoying all liberties at will, having all music at your disposal, and being torn by a single type of torture: what to wear at school the next day in order to be fashionable enough. But for this you should show some curiosity and go and watch the movie. We were 4(four) people in the theater, the rest were watching Wakanda; black panthers seem more appealing and easier to watch than your recent history.
The director Alexandru Belc must have had good advisors; the period accents are well placed, the décor detalis, from house and institution furnishing and deorations to clothes and underwear, the drab atmosphere, the naiveté of the young protagonists, as opposed to the fear and precaution of their parents. The sound track must have cost a fortune out of the film budget- The Doors, Janis Joplin, I don't know about Mircea Florian or Sideral Modal Quartet, but they were rightfully chosen in a film about music, about failed lives in a failed society- not that the present society were perfect... The end of the film, showing all our protagonists debating the subject from the Romanian literature exam comes as a final blow- or maybe an expected one, depending on each viewer's experience: all our protagonists could sit the bac because they had made the pact with the devil, by signing contracts of informants with the securitate. In high school I used to have a school mate who, for a similar "crime", was forbidden to sit the bac and went to work in a coal mine, without graduating. I have no idea what became of him... The film is not perfect. If I were to direct it, I wouldn't show a boy with such long hair - at the party, the one with whom Ana dances, I wouldn't show that outburst of violence- the securitate guy smashing that other boy's face with the phone in front of so many witnesses, I would express a lot more concern about getting pregnant- a constant worry for young girls in those days.
On the whole, "Metronom" comes as close as it gets to a faithful depiction of the times, with the extensive help of the cast- Mara Bugarin, a teenager in love with her heart on her sleeve, unable to believe the sleeve could be so tainted; Vlad Ivanov, who seems to be made for roles of villains such as this one- a securitate colonel: he doesn't hesitate to threat Ana with a gang bang in the basement of the building if she doesn't cooperate, him being the father of a girl barely older than Ana. The best indicator of how much this film caught me is the fact that I simply forgot about the traditional nachos with cheese cream sauce and I left them uneaten, only to discover them almost untouched at the end of the movie. Plus the music score, which sent me back memory lane- aka Youtube- to search for those songs long unheard, but not forgotten. How could one forget "Cu pleopa de argint"- With a Silver Eyelid, by Mircea Florian, albeit a nod to Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Lucky Man"? All in all this film is a respectful reconstitution of times that all young Romanians should know about, in order to avoid repeating them and all older Romanians should too, in order to avoid making fools of themselves when stating, full of conviction, that the socialist/ communist epoch was the best that could be and is to be regretted in contrast with the world we live in? But these representatives of the older generation could very well be the teenagers of yore...
