Tales From the Golden Age

2009

2h 35m

Comedy

List

91%

Tomatometer

34 Reviews

79%

Audience Score

1,000+ Ratings

Romanian urban legends from the chaotic rule of Nicolae Ceausescu are examined in several vignettes. A Communist Party activist (Calin Chirila) blindly follows the rules despite not really knowing them. An inspector (Emanuel Parvu) travels to a small town to make sure it is ready to receive Ceausescu, despite not knowing if he's actually coming. Grigore (Vlad Ivanov), a truck driver, is confused when Camelia (Tania Popa) offers to buy eggs that were laid in the back of his van.

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V.A. Musetto

New York Post

The collection is a mixed bag, although there are no clunkers.

Rated: 2.5/4

Aug 26, 2011

Full Review

Stephen Holden

New York Times

There are moments, especially in the first two tales, that conjure a maniacal Chaplinesque verve.

Rated: 3/5

Aug 25, 2011

Full Review

J. Hoberman

Village Voice

Bracketed by the Ceausescu anthem, the movie recalls a social disaster in painstaking detail and with a measure of ambivalent love.

Aug 24, 2011

Full Review

Eve Tushnet

Patheos

...laced with gallows humor.

Mar 26, 2020

Full Review

Martin Tsai

Critic's Notebook

The universal midlife crisis just strikes as a woefully inadequate way to conclude a compelling chapter in Romanian history.

Oct 7, 2015

Full Review

James Verniere

Boston Herald

'Golden' opportunity for foreign-language film buffs.

Rated: A minus

Dec 2, 2011

Full Review

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Audience Member

Magical absurdity of Ceausescu era in small funny tales.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

01/19/23

Full Review

Audience Member

It should have been a bit shorter (the last two shorts grow increasingly dull and listless), but when it connects (which it does at least 75% of the time), this collection skewers the delusional absurdity of the Ceausescu regime with brilliant deadpan humor.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/04/23

Full Review

Audience Member

A well made movie comprising a few small stories one after the other. Such a subtly humorous take on the lives in that era and I'm sure most of these stories are actually true which makes it even more funny !

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Brilliant script and acting!

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Such a great collection of true stories. A dark comedy with beautiful portraits of an era of horror in Romania.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/09/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Five shorts from a five-director team make up this brilliant portrait of Ceausescu's Romania, each of them revealing a sad truth about how tough life was but coming at it from a whimsical and vaguely nostalgic angle. (The title refers, of course, to what the dictator himself named the time during which he ruled, and is used ironically, here.) We start in a small town, in which the residents go to pains to prepare for a government visit; then, we move inside the party machine and follow a photographer as he bungles an official photo while trying to both make his superiors proud (idealogues, all of them) and hit the deadline for the morning paper. A young woman gets in league with an attractive scammer who loves watching Bonnie and Clyde in a story that feels a lot like Badlands. A family gets the pig it was promised, but instead of it being already butchered, it's delivered alive to their tiny apartment. And finally, we follow a truck driver transporting chickens for export in order to afford to buy eggs, in an attempt to give his wife the one thing she wants and maybe restore the love to their marriage. Each vignette closes with a fairy tale-esque ending - though none of them are "they lived happily ever after" - and a moral, making the fusion of folktale and urban legend complete and providing a window into the difficulties of life in 1980s Romania. The acting is a little weak in places (you can tell even if you don't speak Romanian), and on the whole the film feels a bit too long (nearly two and a half hours), but Cristian Mungiu is a rising star of cinema and this work does not otherwise disappoint. Definitely a film maker to keep an eye on - I have a feeling he's going to get a big U.S. or U.K. or French budget and wow us one day soon.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/18/23

Full Review

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Hanno Höfer

Director

Razvan Marculescu

Director

Cristian Mungiu

Director

Constantin Popescu

Director

Diana Cavallioti

Crina

Radu Iacoban

Bughi

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Synopsis

Romanian urban legends from the chaotic rule of Nicolae Ceausescu are examined in several vignettes. A Communist Party activist (Calin Chirila) blindly follows the rules despite not really knowing them. An inspector (Emanuel Parvu) travels to a small town to make sure it is ready to receive Ceausescu, despite not knowing if he's actually coming. Grigore (Vlad Ivanov), a truck driver, is confused when Camelia (Tania Popa) offers to buy eggs that were laid in the back of his van.

Director: Hanno Höfer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu
Producer: Cristian Mungiu, Oleg Mutu
Screenwriter: Cristian Mungiu
Genre: Comedy
Original Language: Romanian
Release Date (Streaming): Apr 3, 2016
Runtime: 2h 35m

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