Graduation (2017)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Just perfect...

Better Late Then Never

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

"Graduation" is proof that the plight of the white male we're currently hearing so much about in America is not limited to the U.S.In the latest film from Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, our protagonist, the middle-aged Romeo, desperately wants his daughter to get into an elite British college. He hounds her day and night about her exams. She seems like a responsible, level-headed girl, but we sense that the whole thing isn't quite as important to her as it is to her dad. Then she's sexually assaulted one day, and the emotional and physical trauma the assault causes threatens to affect her performance at her exams. Romeo decides to take matters into his own hands and we watch as things begin to spiral out of control."Graduation" is a bit one note. We understand early on that Romeo is projecting a lot onto his daughter. He's unsatisfied with his own life, which is a failure in his own eyes. He has a desultory and sullen marriage, lives in what looks to be government housing in a poor area, and is part of a traditional patriarchal system that seems to be losing its grip. "Graduation" is full of scene after scene of middle-aged men striking bargains, calling in favors, putting each other in touch with a friend of a friend. But there's an increasingly desperate quality to all of the mutual back scratching, and we sense that these guys are beginning to feel what it's like in a world where they no longer call all the shots. The final image of the film lingers on a group of young graduating Romanians. What will become of them, the film seems to ask? What future Romania will they manufacture? The answer is unclear, except for the fact that it will likely not include a place for someone like Romeo.This is the third Mungiu film I've seen after "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" and "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days," and while it doesn't pack anywhere near the same wallop as those other two films, it's still quite good. It reminded me an awful lot of the recent Iranian movie "The Salesman," as both feature middle-aged men going to extreme lengths to influence circumstances that are largely out of their control.Grade: A

Total waste of my time. Kept waiting for something (anything!!) to happen. It just meanders along leaving plot holes, unexplained events, and unresolved issues in its wake. Starts nowhere, does nothing, ends nowhere.The high ratings of other reviewers must have been written by the artsy/fartsy intellectual types who swoon in rapturous joy as they ascribe significance to pretentiousness.

All parents can be excessively protective when it is regarding their children. Bacalaureat unfolds the moral choices of a father to justify his decisions especially securing the future of loved ones and how far can he go? Besides, as it was said in the film, 'What is important is not the processes we have experienced but the result we want to achieve. We have to pass every tests regardless of the methods we choose in order to live the life we ​​desire.'It may be a slow-paced film for some viewers but it is a complex study of a father's moral values as it was seen after hitting the dog with his car, he went to the same place to find out what had happened to the dog and then he came across with death body of dog and he started to sob because of the remorse. If he had left Eliza to the school at the beginning of the film instead of letting her walk, would the consequences be different?

This must be one of the slowest, pointless and most disappointing movies I have ever seen. The creator probably had an idea for a story but stopped right there. If this was a 10 min 2nd year project in film school, it might have passed, but at 2:08 (that's 2 HOURS and 8 min!) its just a very poor excuse for the "quality foreign film" label. Every scene is dragged to at least 10 times what should have been its length. The questions the film is meant to deal with - parenting, Ideals, morals, state vs. citizen - are lost in vector-less hovering of each and every character. I would gladly have written a spoiler but I can think of no way to spoil this any further.