For once, the factory employees are in good spirits, but it has nothing to do with festivities planned for the 75th anniversary of the Romanian Communist Party. The Steaua Bucharest football team pulled off an unlikely upset victory over mighty Barcelona in the European Cup final late the night before, leading to nationwide euphoria. Comrade Sub-Engineer Iulica Ploscaru videotaped the match to curry favor with his boss—not that ordinary Romanians are supposed to have luxuries like VCRs. Ploscaru though, has a knack for working angles and exploiting grey areas.
The Comrade Sub-Engineer works in the safety department, where his ill-defined duties include producing two cautionary films for the annual assembly. One is a documentary, while the other is an “artistic” film, illustrating the consequences of workplace negligence. His primary subject is Mrs. Comrade Lidia Spataru, a worker on disability whom he is has sort of-kind of been carrying on an affair with. She also stars as the Peter Pan-looking protagonist of his so-called art film, Adalbert’s Dream.
There are all kinds of workplace pettiness going on in Dream, but everyone is afraid of Comrade Tocmagiu, the Party enforcer, most definitely including Ploscaru’s boss, Lafardau. Clearly, office politics were no laughing matter under Communism. Ceaușescu’s workplace safety bureaucracy was also rather Kafkaesque, primarily existing to disallow workmen’s comp, if the periodic excerpts the film shows us from official reports are accurate at all.
Ploscaru is a rather bizarre screen protagonist, nebbish but self-centered, reckless but not rebellious, per se. He is a great comic character (who cannot tell a joke to save his skin), portrayed with sly understatement by Gabriel Spahiu.
In a clever screenplay co-written with noted Romanian author Cosmin Manolache, Achim perfectly captures the uncomfortable atmosphere of forced camaraderie (which any clock-watcher can relate to). He also conveys the dismal drabness so peculiar to the era. Yet, it is the implications of Dream’s events, often subtly implied, that really drive home the pathological dysfunction of the Ceaușescu years.
