Synopsis
Directed by: Alexandru Tatos
Script: Petre Sălcudeanu (based on a novel by Cezar Petrescu)
Cast: Ion Caramitru, George Constantin, Remus Mărgineanu, Tania Filip, Emilia Dobrin-Besoiu, Vladimir Găitan, Dan Condurache, Florin Zamfirescu, Claudiu Stănescu, Valentin Voicilă, Ioana Pavelescu, Doina Tamas, Minodora Condur, Mariana Baboi
Producer: Marian Popescu (Bucharest Film Production Center)
Cinematography by: Călin Ghibu
Edited by: Cristina Iacobescu
Sound: Tiberiu Borcoman
Music: Cornel Țăranu
Year: 1985
Category: Feature film
Genre: Drama, War
Duration: 90 minutes
12,654 – Cinepub viewers
PLOT SUMMARY
A believer in the idea that war is a means of renewing the world, the film’s main character, the young lawyer Radu Comşa, enrolls in military school and is sent to the front lines of World War I. Ironically, upon his return, marked by his experiences in the trenches, he can no longer find his place in the new post-conflict world, especially since his eyesight has been affected.
AWARDS
- 1986 – ACIN, Award for Best Actor (Dan Condurache)
- 1986 – ACIN, Award for Best Soundtrack (music by Cornel Țăranu)
CRITICAL REVIEWS:
“Confused, seeing his human and spiritual values collapse in the face of the tragic experience of war, the young intellectual Radu Comşa reconstructs his oscillating existence in the final moments. (…) One could say that we are dealing with a controlled explosion, because, despite the fragments that make up the whole, the film adaptation tends towards a rounded structure, a cyclical movement, corresponding to a certain symmetry of ideas, intensely exploited by the director; the moral force of war, in which the protagonist—and not only him—believed, proved to be an illusion, one of the many maintained by society at the beginning of the 20th century.“ – Magda Mihăilescu in the daily newspaper ”Informația” (July 26, 1986)
“The world has gone mad,” exclaims Radu Comşa, in various tones ranging from confidence to revolt, in a remarkable sequence of the party, bewildered. But was it really necessary to go through a cataclysm for the hero to realize the ‘wickedness of the world’, of that world foreign to him, in which he had agreed to live? His colleague, the dying poet Dan Scheianu, knew this truth long before, and the belated annexation of another’s discovery makes even more futile the struggle of the one who returned from the front with his face and soul mutilated. I mentioned the name of the secondary hero Dan Scheianu, to whom the authors have given special significance; few of the characters in the novel are abandoned; all those who have marked, in one way or another, the protagonist’s universe are summoned, bringing with them their little history: the cynical potentate Vardaru and his conformist daughter Luminiţa, friends, comrades from the front, the anarchist Mogrea, the self-reconciled Probotă, the women once loved. As in a theater of final judgment and definitive separation, the entire space of the film is imagined as one and the same (with the exception of the exteriors), a few walls that seem to repel light, despite the unifying, recognizable windows.” – Magda Mihăilescu in the daily newspaper Informația (July 26, 1986)
“All his films, however different in style, betray a spirit for which culture has become nature, betray the feverishness of a talent obsessed with the scale of ideas, of an art so easily slipping into superficiality.” – Eugenia Vodă
“The story in Petrescu’s novel did not necessarily interest him (A. Tatos), perhaps only the idea, so he did something unusual that not many other Romanian filmmakers would have attempted, perhaps only Iosif Demian: he de-dramatized, or rather re-dramatized the narrative so that, starting with the suicide, with some beautiful underwater shots pierced by an inert body at the mercy of the currents, incomprehensible at first glance, and indulging in a back-and-forth flow of memory and hallucination, a life passing before his eyes, “Gathering Clouds” becomes a cinematic essay about the disillusioned ideals of a Radu Comșa, played tensely by Ion Caramitru.” – Călin Boto, cinepub.ro
“It is true that Gathering Clouds arrived in a roundabout, bureaucratic, and in any case somewhat impersonal way to be made by Tatos — but even so, it is no less true that, quoting Flaubert’s observation about Madame Bovary, ‘Radu Comșa, c’est moi’. Perhaps not coincidentally, towards the end of the film, Radu Comșa confronts Dan Scheianu, and at the same time confuses himself with him.” – Călin Boto, cinepub.ro
TRIVIA:
- At the time, the film represented the director’s “comeback” to the film set after a three-year hiatus, he stated in an interview for Cinema magazine in August 1985.
- Alexandru Tatos did not consider himself a fan of film adaptations of novels. He said that viewers “who entered the theater with the preconception that they had come to see a film that translated page by page (or every other page…) Cezar Petrescu’s well-known novel would be disappointed.”
- “The viewer who comes to see a film-work-of-art in its own right, good or bad, but an independent film, inspired by the novel “Întunecaere” (Gathering Clouds), which attempts to distill or highlight ideas, issues, situations, and characters from the book, transposed through the ‘eyes’ of its creators and through the specific means of cinematic art, may be satisfied. I know it is a more difficult film to follow. The viewer generally wants a clear, flowing story with an introduction, a middle, and an ending. They will not find this—at least not in the way they are used to. The development of the film’s plot, based on the premise that Radu Comşa reviews his life in the seconds leading up to his final act (condensing, as in a self-trial, the moments, good and bad, sensations, crises, and self-accusations that led him down a path of no return), implicitly determined the mosaic structure of the cinematic discourse, whose fluency I hope stems from the underlying idea (or ideas) suggested,” the director confessed, according to the website www.aarc.ro.
- Filming began on July 1, 1985, in Eforie Nord. After a month, Tatos wrote in his diary: “Filming is progressing slowly. I can say that this is the most difficult film I have ever made. Difficult from every point of view…”
- Ion Caramitru recalls, in an interview given to Jurnalul Național, how difficult the makeup process was for his character, Radu Comșa: “In the end, they decided on my casting and I had to go to the studios in Moscow, because we didn’t have the capacity to produce that exceptional makeup, the half-face burn that you had to put on every day for two months of filming, so that it wouldn’t destroy your face or make you sick, and so that it would remain realistic. It was very complicated… I spent a few days in Moscow, in the makeup room, with the film’s makeup artist, we found the solution and in the end it worked…”
- The sequence with Ion Caramitru in the Black Sea, where the character Radu Comșa drowns, seems to have been particularly complicated: “(…) it was an adventure, because no one knew how to do this, a cameraman came in a diving suit, I had to drown myself, which was a terrible thing, because you don’t sink like that anyway… You sink when you’re drowning, if you’ve swallowed enough water to pull you down, but I wasn’t swallowing water… And the clothes were big, I was also wearing a long trench coat that went down to the ground, in which I froze, because even though it was 40 degrees outside, the water there was crazy cold. In the end, they put some lead belts on me, tried to give me a breathing apparatus, they gave it to me, but I didn’t really know how it worked and I almost drowned for real. It took us two days to shoot a sequence of a few seconds. It was a nightmare… And when we finished, I came out completely frozen and with all my muscles stiff, I had to be resuscitated on the shore.” (Ion Caramitru, jurnalul.ro)
- Although it seems that the filming was complicated, Ion Caramitru said that there was a day during filming when they had to “suspend filming because of laughter.”
LINES:
• “Miss Betty, less manicure and more attention.” – Alexandru Vardaru (Goerge Constantin)
• “In a war, if there is one, victory is not only won on the front lines.” – Alexandru Vardaru (Goerge Constantin)
• “War without a lofty ideal is murder.” – Virgil Probotă (Vladimir Găitan)
• “Maria, I loved you. Do you believe me?” – Ion Caramitru (Radu Comșa)
• “Last night I caught myself singing. And I thought I was like the girls in the countryside who, after they get married, only sing lullabies.” – Maria Probotă (Emilia Dobrin)
• “Your life isn’t that serious. It’s a matter of care. I have a room; if you want, you can come with me. We’ll sleep, we’ll read.” – Radu Comșa (Ion Caramitru)
• “Do you want to see me die? Get out, you scum!” – Bocaneț (Valentin Voicilă)
• “And I believe in the moral force of war!” – Radu Comșa (Ion Caramitru)
• “War has come to bring new ideas to this old, tired, unsatisfied world, for a new age. It’s like taking the healthy seed from a rotten fruit, which carries within it the germ of another life – a new one.” – Radu Comșa (Ion Caramitru)
ARTICLES:
- Alexandru Tatos – The feverishness of an exceptional talent – agenda.liternet.ro
- Gathering Clouds. Mini-interview with Al. Tatos – aarc.ro
- Gathering Clouds – istoriafilmului.ro
- Romanian theater and films: Gathering Coulds (1986) – agerpres.ro
- “Radu Comșa was the most difficult role I ever played” – jurnalul.ro
- Alexandru Tatos: For Romanians, the stomach is more important than the brain – ziarulmetropolis.ro
This premiere is part of a national archive project supported by the Romanian National Film Centre.
Special thanks goes to the Romanian Filmmakers Union and to the Romanian Film Archive.
