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      ‘Acasa, My Home’ Review: Civilization and Its Malcontents

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s pick‘Acasa, My Home’ Review: Civilization and Its MalcontentsA family’s dispossession to make way for a nature park is the subject of this Romanian documentary.A marshy field of dreams: A scene from Radu Ciorniciuc’s documentary, “Acasa, My Home.”Credit…Mircea Topoleanu/Zeitgeist FilmsJan. 14, 2021, 2:33 p.m. ETAcasa, My HomeNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Radu CiorniciucDocumentary1h 26mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.The home in “Acasa, My Home” is a wild, marshy expanse on the outskirts of Bucharest, an abandoned reservoir populated mainly by birds, fish and insects. At the beginning of this documentary, directed by Radu Ciorniciuc, the only human residents are Gica Enache, his wife, Niculina, and their nine children. Surrounded by chickens, hogs, pigeons and dogs, they live in proud, occasionally belligerent defiance of “civilization,” a word Gica utters with disdain.The children run through the reeds, catch fish with their bare hands, wrestle with swans and perform household chores. The scene isn’t entirely pastoral, though, and Gica isn’t exactly Henry David Thoreau. He’s a moody patriarch, part anarchist and part autocrat, shielding his family from the power of the state with his own sometimes tyrannical authority. When he’s confronted by social workers, the police and other officials, he’s not always diplomatic. At one point, he threatens to set himself on fire. “These are my children, and I can kill them if I want” might not be the best thing to say to child welfare officers.[embedded content]Filmed over four years, “Acasa” tells the complicated, bittersweet story of Gica’s defeat. When the Romanian government designates the area as a protected nature park — reportedly the largest in a major European city — the Enaches are forced out. They dismantle their house, a sprawling structure made of blankets and plastic sheeting draped over a makeshift wooden frame, and move into an apartment. The children, provided with haircuts, shoes and new clothes, attend school regularly for the first time. The oldest son, Vali, finds a girlfriend and asserts a measure of independence from his father.Does this represent progress or catastrophe? For Gica, the answer is clear: Everything he values has been taken away. But while Ciorniciuc views him with evident sympathy and respect, “Acasa” isn’t an uncritical or romantic tale of paradise lost. You can see the park administrators, government ministers and municipal bureaucrats through Gica’s eyes — as smiling, condescending agents of a force that disturbs his peace and threatens his identity. You can also see him from their perspective, as a man subjecting his family to dangerous and unsanitary conditions who needs to be protected from his own impulses.The film is not static. It’s dialectical — constructing its narrative as an argument between two opposed positions, neither of which is fully embraced. There is a nobility to Niculina and Gica as they try to resist the power of a state convinced of its own benevolence. And the actions of the state are not entirely unreasonable. It’s not as simple as taking the side of individualism against government, or for that matter of being in favor of parks, schools and a decent social order.That’s all fairly abstract, but “Acasa” is full of ideas because it contains so much life. It’s both intimate and analytical, a sensitive portrait of real people undergoing enormous change and a meditation on what that change might mean. It taps into something primal in the human condition, a basic conflict between the desire for freedom and the tendency toward organization — an argument, finally, about the meaning of home.Acasa, My HomeNot rated. In Romanian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters and on Kino Marquee. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Music

      Molchat Doma Is Fun on TikTok. In Belarus, It's Serious.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThis Band Is Fun on TikTok. In Belarus, It’s Serious.Molchat Doma, a synth-pop trio, has become an unlikely social media star. Back home, its music was the soundtrack to a traumatic year.Members of the band Molchat Doma in Minsk, Belarus, on Dec. 5. From left: Pavel Kozlov, Egor Shkutko and Roman Komogortsev.Credit…Yahuen Yerchak for The New York TimesJulia Vauchok, Alex Marshall and Dec. 23, 2020Updated 10:20 a.m. ETMINSK, Belarus — On a recent Saturday night, Hide, a trendy nightclub in Belarus’s capital, was packed. More than 600 clubgoers were jostling for a view of the stage in the tiny venue, hidden in an inner-city courtyard.Social distancing was impossible, but none of the crowd seemed worried about the coronavirus. Instead, they just looked happy to have gotten in to see Molchat Doma, a moody local synth-pop trio that this year became a lightning rod for younger people in Belarus, and an unlikely internet phenomenon abroad.Since August, when President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, who has been called Europe’s last dictator, claimed an implausible election victory, mass street protests and a brutal police crackdown have put a spotlight on the former Soviet country.But even before that, Molchat Doma was bringing Belarus some international attention. In February, one of the band’s tracks, “Sudno” (“Vessel”), started appearing in clips on TikTok, the social media app. A TikTok spokesman said that he believed the first use was by a man promoting his tattooing business; that video got a few hundred likes. But the gloomy yet danceable song’s popularity grew, and, within a few months, it had been used in more than 150,000 clips.In one, the music plays while a woman dyes her armpit hair blue; in another, someone tries on dozens of outfits. One short video, in which a dog wearing sunglasses runs around to the frenzied tune, has been liked more than 1.4 million times.Most of the app’s users seem unconcerned — or unaware — that the song’s lyrics, in Russian, are about a poet contemplating suicide: “Living is hard and uncomfortable, but it’s comfortable to die” goes one line.Word of Molchat Doma soon spread beyond TikTok, and now more than two million people stream the band’s music each month on Spotify, many of those in the United States. In November, the band released its latest album, “Monument.”At Hide, few were talking about Molchat Doma’s social media success. Instead, fans spoke about how important the band had been to young Belarusians through this turbulent year. Some chanted slogans associated with the protests while they waited for the band to come onstage, such as “Long live Belarus!” and “We believe! We can! We will win!”“If Belarus were music, it would sound like Molchat Doma,” said Polina Besedina, 20, waiting to get a drink at the bar. Another clubgoer, Aleksandra Shepelevich, 20, said, “These guys feel what we live in right now.”Other fans agreed that Molchat Doma’s music had captured the atmosphere in Belarus. It may sound depressing, but it was also upbeat, said Yegor Skuratovich, 32, adding that it reflected young people’s “hope that everything will turn great.”In a Skype interview, the band’s members — the singer Egor Shkutko, 25, and the instrumentalists Roman Komogortsev, 26, and Pavel Kozlov, 27 — said they did not make a conscious effort to address Belarus’s political situation in their music, but, naturally, the circumstances in which they live were reflected.Molchat Doma performing in Warsaw in October 2019. “These guys feel what we live in right now,” one fan in Belarus said.Credit…Michal Najdzik“Monument,” the new album, was finished before the disputed presidential election in August, and the band said that its songs were about failed relationships, rather than current affairs. In fact, they preferred not to talk about the protests at all.“Any hasty word that was said too loud can result in a loss of freedom,” Kozlov said of daily life in Belarus. “In a good situation, that would mean 15, 30 days of arrest; in a worst case, two to three years behind bars,” he added. “So, as a band, we don’t talk about politics and our music doesn’t touch upon it.”“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t concern us,” said Komogortsev. “It does.”The band’s success on TikTok has taken them by surprise, they said: They only found out that “Sudno” had become a hit on the app when friends started sending them clips. It was odd to see people “doing silly things to such existential lyrics,” Kozlov said, but the band quickly saw the upside, given that the pandemic had stopped them playing shows.“I was worried that we could wither away,” Shkutko said, “but this thing kept us afloat.”Kozlov said that he thought an idealized view of the post-Soviet world had contributed to the band’s international appeal. Its album covers and music videos feature some striking examples of communist architecture, including heroic monuments and huge concrete housing blocks.“We make it look romantic,” Kozlov said, adding that the reality was quite different. “Just send an American to live in our apartment,” he said. “They would be shocked.”Not everyone using the band’s music on TikTok seemed interested in Brutalist aesthetics. Kaya Turner, a psychology student at the University of Central Florida, got more than 1.2 million likes for the clip in which she dyed her armpit hair blue to “Sudno.” She said she had used the song because she had heard it in other clips on the app, and “just thought it was cool,” she said in a telephone interview. She hasn’t listened to the band since, she added.Kaya Turner, a psychology student at the University of Central Florida, posted a clip on TikTok in which she dyed her armpit hair blue to the soundtrack of a Molchat Doma song. The video was liked more than 1.2 million times.Credit…via TikTokBut others have been converted into fans. Liana Gareeva, 29, a Russian customer service representative who lives in the Netherlands, said in a telephone interview that she had listened to everything Molchat Doma had released since coming across them on TikTok.“It is really nice poetry,” she said, “and a really nice old vibe, like vintage music.”In August, she decided to use the band’s popularity on the app to raise awareness of the situation in Belarus. She posted a clip of protesters being beaten, with “Sudno” playing as a soundtrack, overlaid with the message “Belarus we are with u!” It got about 4,000 likes.“Young people don’t read the news, so they look at TikTok,” Gareeva said. “I know a lot of people think this app is stupid, but I’ve learned so much from it.”Back at Hide, the crowd clapped and whistled for Molchat Doma to come onstage. When the musicians finally arrived, dressed all in black, everyone surged forward for a better view.For nearly two hours, the band played and the audience danced to songs that might be about heartbreak, or maybe protest.“I don’t give a damn about what will happen to me later,” Shkutko sang toward the end of the show, his voice booming over a bouncy, ’80s-inspired beat. “I dance like a God, because tomorrow will not be the same,” he sang.A few days after the show, Molchat Doma posted a clip from the show on TikTok. The video showed Shkutko bathed in blue light, writhing to the beat, his eyes closed as he sang. The song was “Sudno” and the clip soon amassed 5,600 likes. It was a respectable number — but a lot less than the blue armpit hair got.Julia Vauchok reported from Minsk, Belarus; Alex Marshall from London; and Ivan Nechepurenko from Moscow.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More