The State of Things

“If the viewer does not feel hit in his stomach after seeing this film, my work has been useless,” declared director Stere Gulea of his wrenching drama involving a medical worker swept up in state corruption and violence, “one of the most powerful accounts of the Romanian Revolution” (Film Society of Lincoln Center). As Ceauşescu’s regime begins to crumble, an idealistic hospital employee witnesses multiple crimes by the secret police. She speaks out, but at a price. Gulea, whose The Journey (1987) is an early Romanian masterpiece, brings what filmmaker Lucian Pintile called a “severe and objective” worldview to this uncompromising examination of immorality, revolution, and social conviction.