The action in “Aferim!” takes place in the mid-1830s. Its black-and-white sweep includes men on horses riding out through the harsh frontier and runaway slaves trying to elude bounty hunters.
This is not an American Western, however. “Aferim!” is set in Romania — and there’s never been a Western quite like this.
We come across two riders, who happen to be father and son. The local Constable, named Costandin (Teodor Corban), is a veteran of this rough world. He’s been hired by a landowner to capture a slave who ran away after having an affair with the landowner’s wife.
Accompanying the Constable is his greenhorn son Ionita (Mihai Comanoiu), who may still be a teenager. The kid has a lot to learn, and his father is an expert in the world of flattery, bribery, and making threats.
The Constable is a huge-scaled character, physically and otherwise — he’s the movie’s greatest creation, a sly old fox with a million clichés at his disposal. One of the interesting things about “Aferim!” is the way the film makes you grudgingly come to like this outrageous windbag, despite his corruption.
The Constable is at least a straight shooter, which is more than you can say for some of the other people we meet along the way. The landowner is unspeakably cruel, and the traveling priest is so full of prejudice against other people you half expect his head to explode.
Eventually our travelers find the slave, as well as a runaway child. This presents a problem. Do our bounty hunters have any humane responsibility toward these enslaved people — identified as Roma, or gypsies — or can they wash their hands of the situation?
Director Radu Jude won controversy in his native Romania for making a film that touched on the enslavement of the Roma population. So the film has made history come to light, which is a good thing.
But this one’s quite a bit different from the straightforward punch of, say, “12 Years a Slave.” Like that film, “Aferim!” doesn’t skimp on the violence, but it also has a wild humor throughout, and a tendency to wander in its path.
The humor extends to the title; apparently the word “Aferim” means something like “Bravo,” with sarcasm added. That makes sense, as the characters in this movie don’t have much to cheer about.
“Aferim!” (3½ stars)
This black-and-white Romanian film plays like a Western, with bounty hunters in search of an escaped slave (in this case, the Roma people, or gypsies). It’s uncompromising in its violence, but with black humor around the edges. In Romanian, with English subtitles.
Rating: Not rated; probably R for violence, nudity
Showing: SIFF Film Center
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