Eight postcards from Utopia | Sleep #2

Original Title: Opt ilustrate din lumea ideală | Sleep #2

Directed by: Radu Jude, Christian Ferencz-Flatz | Radu Jude

Length: 71 min. | 61 min.

Country: Romania

Year: 2024

Premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2024 

Synopsis: the existential reality of contemporary consumerist society of Romania through its television ads. | a tribute to Andy Warhol's Sleep.

RATING: 3.5/5 | 3.5/5 (RECCOMMENDED if you are into experimentalist cinema)

 

REVIEW

It would seem a sluggish decision to write one review for two films, especially considering they are very different from each other. Yet, the choice that Radu Jude presented both films at the same festival does not seem random: there are in some ways connective points that go beyond Jude's usual artistic tendencies and the sociopolitical satyre. Both are compilative films, experimental works that inevitably will fill in the sides of Radu Jude's filmography. Somehow, it seems that Eight Postcards from Utopia and Sleep #2 are complimentary in describing the existential dread derived from the consumerist society - the first one, in lifelihood, the second one, in death.

EIGHT POSTCARDS FROM UTOPIA 

Divided in eight chapters, the film details through a compilation of local romanian advertisements from the '90s and 2000s the iconographic depiction of existence as seen on the television screen. Co-directed with philosopher Christian Ferencz-Flatz, whose studies are in the existentialist field, this film explores the way the a metaphysical realm shapes the habits and behaviours - the original romanian title refers to the "ideal world", not the Utopia, a subtle difference that whoever is vexed in philosphy is fundamental: the ideal world is that of Plato, the world where the ideal, abstract but perfect projections of our world exist. In Radu Jude's film, everything has a solution, everything works - thanks to a product, or an answer provided by capitalism. This is how the film cycles back to Jude's core themes, and becomes a reflection on the consumerist contemporary society: ads are tools that shape existence, but also serve a purpose, to sell and induce to consume - they are instruments of behaviour control. Jude moves in a realm that is well known to him: his feature debut The happiest girl in the world parodised the making of an ad, and whose latest feature film Do not expect too much from the end of the world also extensively dealt with the subjugation of the filmic form by corporate needs.

SLEEP #2

Sleep was one of the famously long experimental films by Andy Warhol, featuring six hours of a sleeping man. It is with his sense of irony that Radu Jude imagines a spiritual sequel that both homages and parodises Warhol. The slept that Jude's film features is ethernal, that of the artist, whose tombstone is recorded through a webcam. The six hours are replaced by one, with frequent cuts, zoom ins accompanied by a frustrated sigh, as life happens around the grave: the gardener's incessant cleanup of flowers, the tourists and worshippers that visit the tomb, the occasional animals that are captured. It is hard not to laugh through the film, seeing glimpses of humanity (and stupidity) around this site. It is a film that channels Warhol, Benning and the staticity of experimental american cinema but that also feels profoundly embedded in Jude's taste both through its humour and wit, a film that is genial in its simplicity.

Eight postcards from Utopia and Sleep #2 are assimilable to the more experimental sides of Jude's filmography, which makes them less accessible to larger audiences. While that lies the inevitable danger of being labeled as "minor works", they are outstanding sperimentations.