The Earth’s Most Beloved Son | MakingWaves

The Earth’s Most Beloved Son

Original title: Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni

Şerban Marinescu. 1993, Romania, 138 min

A promising intellectual is arrested on false accusations by the repressive secret police and is sentenced to forced labor in prison at the end of the Stalinist era. Following his release, he can only find the lowliest of jobs, and is trapped in a chain of humiliation and survival in a totalitarian regime dominated by despotic rulers, odious snitches and moral compromise. In this solid adaptation of the eponymous cult novel written by Marin Preda, the great Romanian actor Ștefan Iordache (the malefic dictator in Luxury Hotel) is just as compelling playing the victim descending into the hell of a life unfulfilled.

“Produced shortly after the 1989 fall of the Ceaușescu regime in Romania, The Earth’s Most Beloved Son is a work haunted by the still-fresh and unforgettable terrors of the dictatorship. The film is a hyper-realist, somber and utterly nuanced story of the gradual moral degradation of one man. This film is a touchstone from which one can trace the eventual flowering of the extraordinary Romanian New Wave that has attracted much and well-deserved notice. The gravitas at work here is still under the shadow of the just-vanished world of the Cold War, while pointing to the new decade of younger film story-tellers.” – Andrei Codrescu

Written and Directed by Şerban Marinescu, based on the eponymous novel by Marin Preda
Cinematography: Călin Ghibu
Cast: Ștefan Iordache, Gheorghe Dinică, Maia Morgenstern, Victor Rebengiuc, Tora Vasilescu, Dorel Vișan, Mircea Albulescu, Dorel Vișan, Ileana Predescu
Romanian with English subtitles
DCP

Critics’ Corner

Cine-File: A new review of Nae Caranfil`s film (available online)

"DO NOT LEAN OUT THE WINDOW is a boisterous film that looks at the seismic shift in Romanian society with the cautious joy of a caged animal set free. It is a crucial precursor to the revelatory Romanian New Wave that should not be missed."

NY Times: Film Series to Catch in N.Y.C.

"In Romania, the democratic reforms that followed the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 also turned the country into a global filmmaking powerhouse, culminating in what has been called the Romanian New Wave."

NYRB: J. Hoberman recommends

"These thirty films also include some of the best made anywhere during the past three decades."

MW public – Andrei Codrescu: “In Praise of New Romanian Film”

The New Wave festival returns to New York every year with astonishing new films, alongside a well-curated archive. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

J.B. Spins: “Luxury Hotel” – For fans of dystopian social satire

"Luxury Hotel could have probably only been produced during the immediate post-Ceausescu aftermath, when the palace was available, in all its faded grandeur. It is definitely spectacle, but serious, distinctively pointed spectacle."

Screenslate: “The Autobiography of N. Ceaușescu”- conceived as a flashback

"And now it is our turn, all these decades later, to be the ones to look and learn."

J.B. Spins: “The Oak” – Deeply compelling cinema

"The Oak is a defiantly bold, chaotically head-spinning indictment of Ceausescu Socialism, but it is also deeply compelling cinema. This is definitely auteurist cinema from Pintilie that still connects on a profoundly human level."

The Criterion Collection: Romanians… in America

"Film Forum will be showcasing thirty Romanian films made during the thirty years since the overthrow and execution of iron-fisted dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu."

„The Romanian New Wave shows no signs of waning, with steady input from such directors as Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristi Puiu, and Cristian Mungiu."

„The former communist country has emerged as a powerhouse of cinema over the last two decades and much has been made about the Romanian New Wave, a genre of naturalistic and unflinching films that have been consistently winning top prizes such as the Palme d’Or in Cannes and awards at the Berlin and Venice festivals.”

The New York Times

„In the last decade, the emergence of a Romanian new wave has been one of the most startling developments in world cinema, with one film after another winning prizes at Cannes and elsewhere.”

The Wall Street Journal

"Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema, the annual weeklong survey that has helped define and establish the southeastern European country as a stronghold of socially incisive, independently minded personal cinema.”

The Wall Street Journal

„Romania cinema has gradually become a central component of international film culture."