Reconstituirea (1969)

The film takes place in a single location near a small town, in a natural setting beside a river flowing between two mountains. A public swimming area has been set up there, along with a snack bar and terrace. There is only one woman swimming in the river, young and cheerful, while the snack-bar owner and a police non-commissioned officer are on the terrace. Nearby, an old peasant woman sits with a small flock of geese around her. The snack bar’s loudspeaker is playing a song by the band Phoenix. A fairly large off-road vehicle arrives, carrying, as becomes clear as the film goes on, a prosecutor, a Party apparatchik (the secretary of the local Romanian Communist Party committee), a policeman, a camera operator, two young men, and a teacher who directs the local high school’s evening classes. While the filmmaker sets up his equipment, the prosecutor tells the apparatchik why they have come: the two young men, although friends, got drunk on the snack-bar terrace while celebrating having passed their baccalaureate exams at the end of their evening studies. They then got into a fight, hit the snack-bar owner on the head, and destroyed a kiosk. For this, they could be sentenced to three years in prison for hooliganism, destruction of public property, and attempted murder. The prosecutor says it is a trifling matter, but they have to make a film about the harmful effects of alcohol, after which he will let the boys go free. He confides that he has divorced his wife and asks the apparatchik to lend him some money. Speaking of the teacher, who is sitting alone a little farther away and looks unhappy, he says he is like that because his 19-year-old daughter killed herself and his wife is cheating on him with the prosecutor himself. There is a railway line in the valley, with trains passing from time to time, and now and then the shouts of a crowd can be heard from a football match at a stadium that cannot be seen. While the prosecutor sits on the opposite bank with the apparatchik, who is fishing, the police non-commissioned officer explains to the young men that they must faithfully act out their misdeeds, and then the prosecutor will surely go easy on them. He asks them to sing as they did when they were drunk, as a rehearsal. The boys do not take his orders seriously. So the policeman makes one of them, Ripu, do military exercises, and then Vuică, the other, joins in of his own accord, treating the drill like a game. The teacher loudly protests this treatment, while the young woman present, whom the others call “miss,” enjoys watching the scene. The policeman abruptly stops giving orders and offers the young men cigarettes, then tries to persuade them to do what the prosecutor is asking. The snack-bar owner and Ripu have to hold on to each other as if they were fighting, to act out the film’s first scene. Watching them, the teacher tries to convince the prosecutor that there is no point in making this film. As the camera operator changes the film in his camera, Ripu, still holding the same position with the snack-bar owner, starts to cry and asks him to forgive him; the owner, in turn, asks Ripu to forgive him. The scene is successfully filmed. Meanwhile, some Roma stop in front of the terrace. They have baskets full of raspberries. The officials buy some, and they take a break. Everyone eats raspberries except the two boys. Eventually, some are given to them too, and then the prosecutor returns their identity cards, saying that they are free, but the film still has to be made. The television at the snack bar is showing the football match at the stadium. A player is injured and taken away in an ambulance. It speeds along the valley road, where the geese are. The old woman is distraught because the ambulance has run over two of her geese, while the others have scattered into the forest on the mountainside. The prosecutor sends the policeman to look for the geese. The camera operator and the boys go with him. At one point, Vuică disappears. The policeman takes Ripu’s identity card back and orders him to bring Vuică back. While looking for him, Ripu comes across “miss” and approaches her unsuccessfully. He cannot find Vuică and returns to the snack bar, where Vuică later arrives of his own accord, bringing the geese with him. In the meantime, the teacher has got drunk at the snack bar. Filming has to continue. Ripu does not want to do it at all, but Vuică takes it in good humor. The camera operator shows Ripu how to hit Vuică. After refusing a few times, Ripu does it. Vuică pretends to fall and, finding himself under a shower, pulls the handle and sprays his friend. Ripu gets angry and nearly hits him for real, but they are separated. The drunken teacher again protests against the abusive nature of what is happening and holds out his hands toward the prosecutor, as if asking to be handcuffed. Then he becomes unwell and is put in the vehicle. Filming continues with the scene in which the boys demolish a kiosk while fighting. Only one scene remains to be shot. Ripu is made to repeat several times the action of hitting Vuică, who rolls down a muddy sloping bank near a bridge. In the first takes, Ripu only pretends to hit him, but eventually he really does, and Vuică’s mouth starts bleeding. He asks Ripu why he hit him. The scene would have been very good for the film, but the camera operator did not film it because he was loading the camera at that very moment. So this time it is the camera operator whom Ripu hits. The match is over, and the crowd of supporters passes by the filming location and stops to watch. They prepare to shoot the scene again, but this time Ripu refuses to hit Vuică. He wants to hand his identity card back to the apparatchik, who will not take it. Vuică deliberately provokes Ripu, who eventually hits him. The reenactment is over. The prosecutor goes to the vehicle and offers Ripu a ride back to town for the two friends, but Ripu refuses. Meanwhile, the vehicle has rolled down to the river and got stuck in the mud, its front wheels in the water, because the handbrake had not been applied. Supporters laboriously push it back onto the road, with the teacher and the prosecutor, who has just climbed in, inside. The vehicle passes through the crowd of supporters, who wave to the prosecutor, and he waves back. For a while, Vuică remains sitting on the ground, feeling his head, then gets up and walks away unsteadily. Supporters who pass him think he is drunk. Eventually, he collapses. Ripu, who has caught up with him, tearfully asks him to forgive him, but Vuică is still joking, telling him not to be sorry because he is fed up with everything and is leaving. Blood is running from one of his ears, and he dies. A supporter scolds Ripu, who hits him. Another supporter, the first man’s son, wants to hit Ripu back, until the others separate them. The film ends with a close-up of Ripu’s sorrowful, disgusted face.