Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Richard Chatten Interesting as it is to be able to observe one of the Cold War's craziest dictators at such close quarters for three hours, it's perverse of 'The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu' that it should derive its fascination from the unfamiliarity of the material, but then insist on compromising the impact provided by that very unfamiliarity by deeming itself too cool to bother with fuddy-duddy conventions like commentary and captions to give the audience a much-needed sense of context at critical moments: of which it serves up many. Two sequences that particularly stand out are a breathtaking North Korean pageant in exquisite colour, staged on Ceaușescu's behalf by a beaming Kim Il-sung some time presumably in the seventies; and the 84 year-old communist party veteran Constantin Pîrvulescu taking the podium at the 12th Party Congress in November 1979 and launching into a remarkable attack on Ceaușescu calling for his resignation. (The film left me extremely curious as to what happened to Pîrvulescu next, but it was to Wikipedia that I had to turn to find most of the information I've just given you, and that Pîrvulescu, rather than being immediately killed was simply placed under house arrest, survived the Ceaușescu years and lived to be 96; news that ironically revealed the Ceaușescu regime in a better light than I had anticipated).There has always struck me as a certain aloof arrogance about documentaries that entirely dispense with commentary. (Just as 'Shoah's refusal to include ANY historical footage - so that we don't even get a photograph of the young Jan Karski during his lengthy interrogation by Claude Lanzmann - actually blunted the impact of the material that Lanzmann piously affected to be giving us unadorned). Andrei Ujică's film ironically adheres as stubbornly to its own particular dogma of self-consciously 'audacious' minimalism as Ceaușescu himself did to his own dogmas in the political and economic spheres. Would it really have hurt for Mr Ujică just occasionally to provide the viewer who has invested three hours of their valuable time in watching his film to have provided the occasional caption dating and contextualising the often lengthy and repetitious film clips that he serves up? Mr Ujică would presumably argue that he's just letting the material speak for itself; but simply by selecting three hours of material out of the thousand hours he viewed he's already decided what we're going to get, and even with the limited guidance he provides I could tell that he wasn't always presenting the material in simple chronological order. (Colour footage of Ceaușescu's 60th birthday celebrations in 1978, for example, is then unexpectedly followed by him giving a speech in black & white on the occasion of his 55th birthday five years earlier). Ujică has his cake and eats it by bookending the film with the kangaroo court Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu were subjected to on Christmas Day 1989; although once again - presumably deliberately - he throws us a wobbly by not showing us the famous moment four days earlier when Ceaușescu launched into yet another of the speeches we have by now become familiar with, only to be greeted by the unaccustomed sound of booing and heckling.Should Mr.Ujică ever deign to issue this film exactly as it already is only with captions I will happily revise my rating to Nine Stars.

tributarystu Having been born at the end of the 80s, my recollection of communist Romania is negligible. So for me, this wealth of archival footage represents less an excursion into dreary eyed nostalgia, but rather a fascinating, vicarious experience. It is unfathomable to think that this is a part of our human heritage, and the film leaves the impression of being a document of society, culture and politics that's out of this world. This other-worldliness is achieved through the exclusive use of archival footage, to the detriment of any present-day commentary. The biographical tale of Ceausescu leads us through several decades of communist Romania, and is bound by the trial and execution of the former dictator. Surprisingly, although my knowledge of recent Romanian history is fairly limited, there was little actual information in the the events and moments portrayed which I was unfamiliar with. I'm not sure that's a good thing, for such a long runtime - all it says, to me, is that you should probably not watch this documentary if your aim is solely to gain a straightforward understanding of history.What it does do very well, is synthesize the essence of what the public frame of mind was at the time. It ebbs and flows beautifully, from the fascination of the Western world with Ceausescu after his stance on the invasion of Prague, to his ultimate isolation within the communist block. In this, as well as in much of the propagandistic materials made for public consumption, there is a strong sense of falsehood meshed together with a (willing) naivety of the everyday folk. The film is at its best when it manages to effectively contain these paradoxes of truth, the double-standards of pre-89 communist dogma, and the absurdity of turning a mildly charismatic, semi-literate individual into an egomaniac with absolute power.In between all these moments, you've got Ceausescu delving into sheer silliness - with the cherry on top being his speech on how Romania will only return to capitalism when "pigs fly", then joking on the advances of genetics only to realize this is not quite the right thing to say and reinforcing the initial statement with raised pitch and ample gesticulation. There are many scenes like this, of various sizes, that shape Ceausescu as a character and the warped world-view provided by public television. At three hours, one could argue the documentary is overlong, as certain elements become repetitive. One can also argue that in their repetitiveness, these elements bear different meanings, according to the wider context of their occurrence, sort of a seasonal aspect of the biographical story.Whichever way you look at it, there is so much to see and experience in Andrei Ujica's film, that you are guaranteed to not be left indifferent by it.

boxfighter30 this are the best 3 hours of Romanian communist history, a period of nearly 42 years in video, things that you will never find in history books.I find it objective and a real help to understand that era. For those who are not Romanians or interested by the subject , it might be boring, dull or whatever, but again , nobody can't force you to watch it for 180 min, but for me it was a real help on making an image of the years before i was born and the 7 years after that i lived in communism. Glad someone had the courage to do it, too bad its not as promoted as it should among Romanians especially.The title is an irony, because the dictator never had an autobiography or even the chance to see the movie,it presents the debut of communism in Romania and very soon the debut of Ceausescu in the history if the country. We can't judge actions or reactions of the character but we can pretty easily make and opinion about him, especially by listening all his speeches during the movie, where you can have a certain feeling of nationalism surrounding his position towards Romania. As a dictator , he follows the line of all the dictators in the world, living his life in pure luxury while his people struggles to exist, especially in the last years of his "kingdom".Facing the riot of an entire country his faith is sealed, but his death is not people's decision. So before seeing the movie, don't think as if it's an action movie, it's just a history lesson, and if you are not into history, you will never really have the chance to appreciate the quality of this movie. From me it has a 10.

sergnechaev Andrei Ujica's film is an interesting mish-mash of documentary and archive material. Arranged progressively according to the timeline, we are treated to a very long and protracted story of Ceauseascu's life and role in the history of Romania. The film is done according to the very nice-sounding, but eventually problematic motto of "letting the archives and the evidence speak for itself". This proposition can achieve some moniker of success only among those, such as myself, who come from Romania, and know its history well, having studied it at the university level. But to foreigners or even young Romanians, lacking the context and the historical background, the film fails in documenting anything. An external viewer will not know who most of the people in the film are, what the background is for Ceausescu's reactions (such as his speech in 1968 in support of Czechoslovakia) as so forth. The film is also very long, almost three hours, and I admit that even I, who have a professional interest in the documentary material, had to give up half way through and resume later. Making an analogy, the film represents the difference between archive material and a book of history. The material, outside of its chronological arrangement, is raw, lacking subtitles, names etc. in many cases; a documentary based on the material painstakingly gathered by the director would have been much more interesting for the wider public. Still, the film is worth watching for a specialized audience, and shows never before seen material on a very important epoch and person in Romania's history.