Oklahoma City Museum of Modern Art 415 Couch Drive Oklahoma City, OK 73102
Opening with the chilling mock trial of Ceausescu and his wife Elena just before their execution in 1989, the film drifts back in time to glean the leader?s rise from the son of a backwater peasant to international statesman, surreally embraced with high pageantry and pomp by world leaders of every political denomination. We witness the demolition of downtown Bucharest to make way for a colossal presidential palace, the vast, failed construction projects of the 70s and 80s, glimpses of home movies from Black Sea vacations and the silent torture of Romanian people and politicians enduring Ceausescu?s rambling, disconnected speeches in a famished land where dissent is punishable by death. Ujică breaks the bounds of traditional documentary form revealing this draconian autocrat?s fabricated cinematic version of a nation?s reality as a delusional, scathing and dreamlike self-portrait.
