Aferim! is as unusual as its title suggests. It’s a black and white film set in 1835 Wallachia, a region of Romania which dissolved in 1859. Looking at stills of the film, a casual filmgoer may feel confused. Who are these men in fez caps and why are they riding horses in the middle of nowhere? The look of the film is surreal, drawing comparison to last year’s Jauja, that absurdist tale of Argentinian explorers. Aferim!, however, is more relevant than it seems. It’s a meandering, sometimes silly portrait of oppression and its thorny moral implications in the lives of ordinary men.
Constable Costandin (Teodor Corban) and his teenage son Ionita (Mihai Comanoiu) are hired by a local Boyar (a high-ranking member of feudal society) to find and recapture the gypsy/slave Carfin (Toma Cuzim). The Boyar has accused Carfin of running off with stolen money, and the father-son duo dutifully set off in search of the dastardly thief. Lest viewers mistake Aferim! for some wishy-washy, family bonding adventure, writer-director Radu Jude gives Costandin the mouth of a sailor full of the pent-up hatred of a natural born bigot. He can’t read or write, but he can drink, judge and spout aphorisms like a small-minded iteration of Mark Twain.
When Costandin and his son cross paths with an elderly woman on a dirt path (there are no roads in this dry, empty land), Costandin shouts and calls her a “hag.” When the woman tells him that she’s carrying her sick husband, ill with cholera, Costandin is irate. “You should have told us yourself, stupid cow,” he says. “I ought to give your fat ass a whipping.” His speech is mean and crass, like nothing we’ve come to expect from a black and white movie. The combination of explicit dialogue with real-life history turns Aferim! into something truly unique: one part Tarantino, one part Tocqueville.
Director Radu Jude’s frames are so wide that the subjects often appear like tiny characters in a giant picture book. During Costandin’s exchange with the old woman, the camera doesn’t stray from its wide angle. Jude watches from a distance and lets multiple actions occur simultaneously. In this case, a pack of goats moves from the background to the foreground, clanging their bells and competing for our attention along the way.
In a village where the runaway gypsy’s family lives, Costandin’s eloquent mode of handling women is on display once again. He grabs a female beggar by the hair and yells, “Where is he, filthy whore?” Rather than discredit their protagonist, Jude and co-writer Florin Lazarescu take delight in Costandin’s irascibility. If his character merits any dislike, it’s counteracted by the tender way in which he talks to his son between the major scenes. One night, they sit by a fire and Costandin tears up. “We’re nothing,” he tells Ionita. “We’re like a spark from these embers.” Here is where the loveliness of Aferim! comes through, proving how wickedness can coexist with fragile, human fear.
Jude and Lazarescu’s script is not without its share of deliberate, political provocation. When Costandin and Ionita continue on their journey alongside a priest, he turns out to be little more than a vessel of prejudice. The priest hates not only gypsies (“They must be slaves”) but also Jews, peasants, Turks, Italians, Russians and old people. When Costandin and Ionita finally find and cuff Carfin, the gypsy turns out to be a pretty good guy. Over the course of their journey back to the Boyar, Ionita in particular begins to sympathize with the slave. He asks his father if they can let him go, and Costandin seems torn, if only for a second. “You can’t feed your wolf and save the lambs,” he tells his son. “We live as we can, not as we want.”
While the film insists on the cyclical nature of oppression throughout history, it’s not without its brighter moments. Jude delivers such amusing sights as a puppet show, a human-powered Ferris wheel and a bar game which entails pulling a dime out of a flame using only one’s teeth. If this world is “full of evildoers,” as Costandin claims, it is full of worldly delights too, from the sweet taste of brandy to haystack sex with a buxom barmaid.
If the striking parable remains impersonal, it’s not because of the film’s look, which is highly aesthetic, but because Jude’s camera remains at a remove from his characters. Costandin, Ionita and Carfin’s banter is a joy, but our inability to see their faces prevents us from understanding more precisely what they are thinking or feeling. And yet, with or without physical proximity, the words of Costandin linger long after the film is over. “Though I’m as harsh as a hot pepper,” he says at one point, “I treat people kindly.” As the film attests, it’s a lesson that bears repeating in any century, country, color or creed.