The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Tartan | Release Date: April 26, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
32
Mixed:
1
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Mr. Lazarescu is that rich and riveting a film of universal small human moments and big-system failure. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Both sad and darkly funny, the film is so sharply conceived and richly populated that it often registers like a Frederick Wiseman documentary, even though everything is scripted and every part played by a professional... This is only the second feature of Cristi Puiu, who claims to have been inspired by his own hypochondria, but he's already clearly a master. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterDuane Byrge
In this deep probe into modern-day medicine, the old guy is shuttled from hospital to hospital in a surreal, horrifying ordeal of errors, missed diagnoses and institutional malaise. At two hours and 34 minutes, we, seemingly, also endure his agony -- part of this Romanian film's power and, also, its Achilles heel. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
A heartbreakingly powerful masterpiece. Read full review
100
The New York TimesStephen Holden
A thorny masterpiece. Read full review
100
PremiereEthan Alter
Never anything less than wholly engrossing. There's a lot of humor to be found here (primarily of the dark comedy variety) and the cumulative impact of Lazarescu's journey through the Bucharest medical system is quite powerful. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
It's full of humor, pathos and a deep humanism that comes as a warm blast in this age of lifeless, cinematic junk. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
It is a black comedy, among the blackest. It is also more grueling in some stretches than anything in "United 93." Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Like "United 93" and the work of the Dardenne brothers, it lives entirely in the moment, seeing what happens as it happens, drawing no conclusions, making no speeches, creating no artificial dramatic conflicts, just showing people living one moment after another, as they must. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
The movie is a stunner, so hypnotic that the length hardly matters. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu runs the same 2 1/2 hours as "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," but what a difference a comic-dramatic purpose makes. Read full review
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Devastating, uncompromising and riveting. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
A watchful, winding-down tragedy of a movie that delivers what it promises. As commentary, it's grim. As filmmaking, it's a powerfully disturbing odyssey through the Bucharest health care system. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
Part of the film's brilliance is its stunning and unforgiving transmission of the great truth that for most of us, death is not a single, flatline moment, but a gradual, insidious process of deterioration. Read full review
100
Time Out LondonDave Calhoun
The film’s real success is that Puiu impresses both with his compassion for human behaviour and his tight grip on realist, documentary-style filmmaking. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
An intoxicating performance piece in which skilled actors pinball off each other with such energy and nuance that the audience almost forgets about the dying man on the edge of the frame. The style alone makes the movie's point. Read full review
90
VarietyJay Weissberg
Picture's dour take on the dehumanizing process of medical treatment is leavened by black humor and dialogue that always rings true. Read full review
90
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
An explicit ode to mortality, not without a certain grim humor. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Almost as exhilarating as it is depressing. Puiu's filmmaking technique is remarkable, and all the more so because it's almost invisible. Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Puiu's is the art of the seemingly artless: he takes a story that's utterly unglamorous and mundane, and transforms it into something mythic. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
By recording this all too commonplace and dehumanizing process, Puiu's film shows the sick old man and the strangers who deal with him to be all too human - extraordinarily so. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineEd Gonzalez
Radiating a startling intensity, the film demands to be reckoned with. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, for all its terrible matter-of-factness, produces tumultuous feelings of amazement and revolt. Read full review
80
EmpireDavid Parkinson
Long, but engrossing and frequently enraging drama that not only exposes the flaws in the Romanian health service, but also in modern humanity. Read full review
80
Washington PostPhilip Kennicott
It's long, but it's also very real and worth every minute. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesMoira Macdonald
There's something about Fiscuteanu's quietly desperate performance (with much of the emotion conveyed through his eyes), that gets under your skin. Read full review
70
Film ThreatPhil Hall
Do not, under any circumstance, approach this film lightly. Prepare to be depressed, agitated and shocked. And prepare to see a brilliant work of cinematic art. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
This Romanian movie defies categorization--it's halfway between a black comedy and a Fred Wiseman documentary. And it haunts you like the ghost of any dead person you've ever ignored. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Unlike the zippy American medical dramas it apes, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is paid out with the deliberate slowness of a dray horse straining up a mountain path. With every painstaking turn of the screw that seals Lazarescu's sorry fate, Puiu flirts with tedium, but tedium is the point of this hyperrealist tale, paced in what feels like real time. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Though it is undeniably bleak and pessimistic and marked by a texture of observation worthy of British director Mike Leigh, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is not as forbidding as it sounds. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is hopelessly depressing. Yet as a story of the callous impersonalization we inflict upon one another, the film is timeless. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
If Lazarescu's experience is typical in the former Soviet bloc, democracy hasn't done much to humanize the bureaucracy. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Needlessly long, visually drab and not just a foreign-language film, with English subtitles, but a film that's ostensibly foreign to our experience. That said, there are compelling reasons to see it.
38
New York PostKyle Smith
It's supposed to be about a Kafkaesque experience. Instead, it IS a Kafkaesque experience. Why are we here? Is everything absurd? Is anyone in charge? Read full review
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