It's an odd comedy with subtle smiles about the foolishness of human adventures.
The Treasure
Grade: B+
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest)
Screenplay: Porumboiu
Cast: Toma Cuzin, Adrian Purcarescu
Runtime: 1 hr 29 min
by John DeSando
“A man makes his own problems; they don't descend from heaven.” Cornel (Corneliu Cozmei)
The two heroes of the strange but loveable Romanian comedy, The Treasure, do create their problems, mainly digging for treasure in a backyard with the help of Cornel and his metal detector. Although the two hapless diggers are in serious need of cash flow, there is something mock heroic in their haphazard plans that are bound to go wrong from the get go. Not even to say the possibility of Cornel blackmailing them for breaking Romanian found-treasure laws.
Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale tells of the dire consequences when men try to find easy gold, and Treasure of Sierra Madre has a similarly fateful trajectory. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot also comes to mind as the search has a simplicity, frustration, and sure-to fail feel to it. However, The Treasure has a lighter tone, not hilarious by any means, but aiming to take this goofy quest and make it a modern morality tale with Keystone-Cops flavor.
The “takes” are long and slow with an emphasis on establishing, diminishing, and revealing character through conversation in an everyday mode that veritably shouts out the inevitable upending. The pace is leisurely if not downright slow—you know you’re almost in real time as you watch them slowly dig for the treasure. The occasional long shots seem to emphasize the long-shot stupidity of the enterprise.
It’s the ending that will wake you from your torpor to wide-eyed wonder. Enough said.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
