Aferim!

Teodor Corban

Radu Jude's Aferim!, from 2015, is an outstanding film set in the Romania of 1835. The film follows a constable named Costandin (Teodor Corban) and his teenage son Ionita (Mihal Comanoiu) as they track and capture as escaped Gypsy slave. The picaresque nature of the film provides for an overview of the Balkans which Jude, as always in his films, portrays as a cauldron of ethnic resentment. 

The beautiful black and white cinematography and graceful pans of the lead duo on horseback make this the most classically framed of Jude's films. However, the dialogue and narrative arc of Aferim! undercut this with a sardonic flavor that is Jude's trademark. The portrait of the Balkans in this film is that of a brutal and oppressive feudal state. The title, which roughly translates as bravo, is an indication of the dark irony Jude employs. 

Their mission to seize and return the Gypsy slave provides Costandin an opportunity to give his son an unsentimental education in how to survive in a cutthroat world. A few critics have drawn a parallel between this duo and the one in John Ford's The Searchers, but I found Costandin to be more akin to Rooster Cogburn than Ethan Edwards. Costandin shares Cogburn's gift for colloquialisms, discursive storytelling, and ribaldry. Costandin's patter is a mixture of folk songs, fable, and garbled scripture, a blend that contains kernels of wisdom amidst the blarney; ones left behind for the next generation. Teodor Corban's performance ranks amongst the best of this century.

Imparted in Costandin's lessons for his son is that virtue does not exist in a vacuum and that ethical behavior is always situational. When they capture the slave, they automatically feel sympathy for his plight, but they are compelled to do their duty, no matter how odious and the slave's fate turns out to be odious, indeed. Jude's ambivalence towards his cultural heritage is the crux of his work. Aferim! is an ode to Romanian culture, its traditions, music fashions, and parables. It is also a condemnation of that country's history of intolerance and cruelty.