IIie has had his fill of city life and decides to start over again with a clean slate in a small rural town in Moldavia, Romania. As the head cop in the village of Babuleni (a fictional place), he looks forward to a quieter, more laidback lifestyle and the possibility of buying a small patch of land with a fruit orchard. Past failures – a divorce and dismissal from a job under humiliating circumstances – have taught Ilie to keep a low profile and mind his own business. As he ex-wife Mona reminds him, “You fu*ked up your career once playing knight,” and Ilie has no interest in stirring things up in his new locale, despite indications that the town officials may be corrupt. Yet, despite his lazy demeanor and questionable job skills, Ilie soon finds himself dragged into a murder mystery where he is forced to take sides. What begins as an amusing character study of a hapless public figure slowly transitions into a macabre comedy with an unexpected twist ending in Oameni de Treaba (English title: Men of Deeds, 2022), directed by Romanian filmmaker Paul Negoescu.
Small town life has certainly been idealized in such iconic American films as Clarence Brown’s The Human Comedy (1943), based on William Saroyan’s novel, and Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), but Negoescu is more interested in showing rural life in Romania as emblematic of the kind of corruption, graft and greed that has plagued the government of his country for years. A major turning point occurred in 2014 when more than 1,100 Romanians (judges, politicians and businessmen) were indicted by the National Anticorruption Directorate but the problems continue despite numerous arrests and reforms. The systematic rot has permeated everything, even backwater towns like Babuleni.
It might look like a sleepy rural village but is actually the center of a secret smuggling operation which involves numerous residents and is operated by Mayor Constantin (Vasile Muraru), his wife and the local priest Edi (Daniel Busuioc). Those who aid the mayor in his moneymaking schemes are rewarded and Ilie (Iulian Postelnicu) is advised to look the other way and just go with the flow. As a colleague of the mayor tells him, “He’s keeping the community together. He makes sure everyone gets what they deserve….some things are better left as they are, right?”
At first, Ilie is more than happy to do the minimum required for his job and to pass any unwanted duties on to his young assistant Vali (Anghel Damian), a recent gung-ho graduate from the police academy. When a villager comes to Ilie to report the theft of two sheets from her laundry line, the police chief berates her for not keeping track of her property. When Vali appears surprised at his superior’s lack of interest in the case, Ilie lashes out at him, asking, “Want to open an investigation? Call for reinforcements? Should we call Bruce Willis?” Of course, the irony of this scene is that the theft serves as a clue to the axe murder of Policiuc, a local businessman who leaves behind an attractive wife, Cristina (Crina Semciuc), and young son.
Vali’s refusal to give up the investigation of the murder gets Ilie in trouble with the local authorities but so does his personal interest in Cristina, who is being pressured by the mayor and the priest to sell her property. When Vali is found nearly beaten to death with a permanent spinal injury, Ilie is finally motivated to take action but it may be too little, too late.
The first half of Men of Deeds unfolds like a quirky comedy about small town life with eccentric characters and absurd situations but it moves into darker territory in the second half, culminating in a wild west climax that looks like something out of a Coen Brothers or Quentin Tarantino film. In an interview with Corina Sabau of Radio Romania International, Paul Negoescu said, “Instinctively, the first movie I turned to for watching again when I was working on Men of Deeds was the movie Fargo, by the Coen Brothers, although I wasn’t planning to take inspiration from their movie. Things fell into place more from the script [by Radu Romaniuc and Oana Tudor], which pushed me into this area.”
But Men of Deeds is much more than an imitation of a Coen Brothers or Tarantino film and aligns its tale of systematic corruption in a backwater village with an ineffectual protagonist, who is neither good or bad. Ilie is simply a flawed human being and the ideal antihero. Negoescu, in an interview with Variety reporter Christopher Vourlias, described Ilie as a typical Romanian man: “All his life he was told that he needs to be successful, he needs to have a family, he needs to be powerful, because this is how men are supposed to be. But this way of being is not working for him…He’s not built to be a hero….That’s why he feels so unfit in his world. And that’s why he feels that he needs a restart.”
In the title role of Ilie, Iulian Postelnicu does a phenomenal job of bringing his sad sack character to life. With his slouching posture, rumpled appearance and passive-aggressive temperament, he is both laughable and annoying in his interactions with others. Yet, even when he makes a mess of things by trying to right previous wrongs, he remains recognizably human and sympathetic. Offering memorable support are Vasile Muraru as the gregarious but double-dealing mayor and Daniel Busuioc as the violent and very un-Christian priest.
Men of Deeds was a big hit on the film festival circuit, winning numerous awards around the globe. It marked Negoescu’s fourth feature film to date but was a departure from the more lighthearted tone and comic sensibilities of his earlier work such as A Month in Thailand (2012), his film debut, and Two Lottery Tickets (2016), which became Romania’s highest grossing independent film of all time and spawned a sequel, Another Lottery Ticket (2023).
In the U.S., Men of Deeds had a limited theatrical release but the handful of critics who saw it were mostly enthusiastic. Guy Lodge of Variety wrote, “An exceedingly mordant comedy that gradually bleeds out to tragedy, Paul Negoescu’s “Men of Deeds” is another Romanian exercise in finding personal and institutional corruption under every upturned stone, behind every unlocked small-town door, in every heavily conditional handshake….Indeed, it’s largely thanks to Postelnicu’s tricky performance — equal parts pathetic and sympathetic, with a genuine, soulful sadness beneath the amusing tics of his wheezing vocal delivery and gurning body language — that “Men of Deeds” pulls off its odd, queasily tragicomic tonal shuffle as well as it does…”
Highly recommended for fans of Romanian New Wave cinema which includes directors like Radu Jude (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, 2021) and Adina Pintile (Touch Me Not, 2018), Men of Deeds is streaming on Kanopy and other digital platforms. You can also purchase the Blu-ray edition from Dekanalog, which is distributed by Vinegar Syndrome. The extras include behind the scenes footage and an audio commentary with director Paul Negoescu, lead Actor Iulian Postelnicu, cinematographer Ana Draghici and producer Ana Voicu.
Other links of interest:
https://www.filmsinframe.com/en/interviews/iulian-postelnicu-man-of-deeds
https://cineuropa.org/en/interview/429052/
Cinema Sojourns 