Uppercase Print

Serban Lazarovici as Mugur Calinescu in Uppercase Print

I found Radu Jude's Uppercase Print to be immensely entertaining and informative. The film is based on Gianina Carbunariu's play of the same title which tells the travails of a Romanian teenager named Mugur Calinescu after he chalked protest slogans on walls in the city of Botoșani in 1981. The play's text consists of testimony in the archive of Romanian state security. This Jude has performed on a soundstage with different backdrops (depending on the mode of testimony) by actors who address their unseen audience. 

These sequences Jude juxtaposes with found footage from Romanian television archives as counterpoint; an absurdist dialectic. The regime's propaganda conceived for mass consumption contrasted with that same regime's imperious control of its citizens' actions and thoughts. The television footage is a potpourri of patriotic piffle, schlock, Romanian variants of Soviet kitsch, cultural uplift, and documentary footage. The range is wide: a hospital patient tells how his hand was accidentally amputated by a lathe, laws against honking cars are explicated, and we watch snippets of a reality show called "Divorce Court." As in Bad Luck Banging and Loony Porn, there is a satiric tone primed to induce discomfort. Jude keeps all his disparate footage in 1.33 aspect ratio to make it seem like a unified stream. 

It is not a unified stream, of course, and the disjunctive, polyphonic nature of the film may alienate some. There is little dynamism in the film and it is not a showcase for its actors. However, I think it is pretty terrific. The best comedy, pitch black as it is, of 2020.