2006 Directed by Lucian Pintilie
In the Ukrainian steppe, toward the end of World War II, the German and Romanian troops are retreating in the face of the unstoppable Red Army. A Romanian military unit has set up its headquarters in a deserted school. A visit of high-ranking Wehrmacht officers is suddenly announced. Hope is awakened: will they receive new orders? But disappointment comes quickly.
Pas de 3eme option
A dinner for two German officers at a Romanian military camp serves as the stage for a bitter parable about the (largely self-imposed) humiliation of 20th-century Romanian identity in Lucian Pintilie’s Tertium Non Datur. A biting satire that bears the weight of the country’s history, it recalls not only recent Romanian works such as Porumboiu’s The Treasure but also the strongest films of the Czech New Wave. Based on a Vasile Voiculescu short story, the film moves with a single-minded purpose to demonstrate (in contrast to its ironic title) that morality is murky and that right and wrong are not so easily defined. Romania is presented as a nation in-between, a self-immolating third option that might as well not exist. With honor extinguished and respect gone only the recourse is to laugh.
72/100
