The Treasure [2015]
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Corneliu Porumboiu has
a sly genius for mixing droll hyperrealism with dry-to-bones irony, matter of
factness with meandering conversations, and banality with a touch of the absurd.
He’d memorably exhibited these facets in the bristlingly brilliant 12:08 East of Bucharest and the deadpan Police, Adjective, and these were in
fine display in his dour, rigorous and exquisitely low-key The Treasure. This impish antithesis to the adventure genre despite
its deliberately unsubtle title and seemingly thrilling premise, viz. two middle-aged
men going on a mini-odyssey to unearth precious valuables, made for a potent
commentary on post-Communist Romania, with its neoliberal economy, financial
woes cloaking the allure of being better off, and institutional corruption. Costi
(Cuzin Toma), in a drab job and struggling to manage his loans, lives a rather
humdrum life with his family. Hence, when Adrian (Adrian Purcărescu), a broke neighbor
in the same apartment block, approaches him for financial support to hire the
services of a professional metal detector to help find the titular treasure – which
his grandfather had apparently buried to prevent them from being seized during the
anti-aristocracy purge – in exchange for a share in the pie, he hesitantly
decides to help despite his doubts. The routine preparation and the dreary
endeavor over a weekend – especially the brewing hostility between between an
increasingly testy Adrian and the weary Cornel (Corneliu Cozmei), who decided
to help bypassing his boss – made for a darkly hilarious watch, leading to a
rather unexpected payout. Interestingly, the real-life Purcărescu had actually told
Porumboiu about a potential buried treasure from his ancestral past, and
therein lay, initially, the idea for a documentary, and that eventually became
the genesis for this deadpan gem.
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Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Black Comedy
Language: Romanian
Country: Romania
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