GLORY / SLAVA (2016)

Superb, hilarious, devastating.  Tone is everything in this bitter fable of comic frustration as Bulgarian writer-directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov demonstrate the grim, inevitable ramifications of no good deed goes unpunished.  It starts with good fortune as a simple, but honest railroad linesman returns a stash of cash he’s found on the track bed during his daily maintenance rounds.  So, in spite of a disabling stutter that makes him appear witless, the poor man is brought to the city to be celebrated only to encounter a Murphy’s Law of disaster as he’s shuttled about for P.R. events run by an over-burdened official currently in the midst of fertility treatments she hasn’t the time for.  Her selfish contempt for the hero-of-the-day only abetted by her incompetent toadying staff and by her demanding superior.  The misery climaxed by an exchange of the poor man’s beloved ‘Glory’ watch, a cherished gift from his father, with a piece of modern digital junk.  Its inevitable loss setting the stage for a hopeless crusade of sorts; and not just for the missing watch, but also for civic justice as he opens up to a reporter about disappearing fuel deliveries and widespread corruption at the railways.  But when everyone’s in on the action, this truth-teller, honest but plodding, is easily portrayed to look like a menace who must be stopped.  The basic tone of a corrupt society not far from the films of Romania’s Cristian Mungiu*, but given a madly comic twist Preston Sturges would have understood.  (Or is that Gogol nodding in agreement?)  By the third act, all the laughs are sticking in your throat as worst case scenario takes over the action.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Cristian Mungiu’s best known for 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS/’07, but BACALAUREAT/’16 makes the better match.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/04/bacalauureat-graduation-2016.html   OR:  On the Film Movement DVD, this comes with the Oscar-winning Live-Action short, HELIUM/’13, a heart-breaker about a caring hospital orderly who bonds in fantasy with a 10-yr-old terminal patient.  Sounds sentimental, it probably is, but pretty wonderful all the same.