Ziarul: The Weekly Newspaper of New York Data: 1988-10-11
New York Film Festival Tough Choices
An even harder sell, a more conventionally gripping movie, is Mircea Daneliucţs Jacob, a tense, brooding thundercloud in which a sturdy Romanian miner is driven mad by life in a remote village. Thereţs a pre-Word War II ferocity to this prole apocalypse, but it;s as engrossing as a thriller, With its clanging soundtrack and blocky, emphatic style, Jacob is full of blunt symbolism mid expressionist foreboding —it opens with a vision of domestic destruction, and grows increasingly visceral. Although the harshness of the social metaphor is amply justified by the brutal political and economic conditions of the Ceausescu regime, the film is no Jess astonishing for having been mode, let alone appearing in New York.
Jacob, as of yet, has no distributor-one has to congratulate the current selection committee for bringing so tough and unlikely-sounding a movie to general attention. Iţm also appreciative for a sec ...
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