12:08 East Of Bucharest

"Is it a revolution if people took to the streets after the fact?"

12:08 East Of Bucharest is a Romanian comedy-drama film that deals with the subject of the Romanian revolution of 1989. Before seeing this film, the Romanian revolution was just a footnote in history to me, so it was interesting to see how they presented the subject. About the last half of the film shows almost entirely nothing more than a television host interviewing two people on the sixteenth anniversary of the revolution on Dec 22, 1989. I feel that this works in the film's favor in the sense that it makes it unique and interesting.

One scene I found noteworthy is the tracking shot of the car as it drives toward the television studio. The camera follows the rear of the car at an odd distance, and continues to follow the car for several seconds, longer than the average shot to simply make sense of where a character is traveling, but still shorter than some abnormally long scenes in other films.

Although I didn't find 12:08 East Of Bucharest to be overly funny, the film redeemed itself for me because of the fact that it is both unique and well made.