With ‘Merge și-asa’ (the aproximate translation would be ‘It Works, Kind Of’), the team led by director and screenwriter Valentin Urziceanu boldly steps into a cinematic genre in which Romanian cinema has very little tradition and experience – feature film animation, combining musical comedy with family movies (to use the American terminology). Disney Studios and more recently Pixar and their descendants are the great experts of this genre that they have transformed into an entire industry in which movies have generated products ranging from dolls and T-shirts to computer games and amusement parks. I believe that the Disney Studios would not have rejeted on the ideas of this film, which at a dramatic historical place and moment (World War II Europe) and addresses constantly current issues (diversity, combating racial discrimination) by combining them with perennial motifs (love and music). However, the professional bar supported by a tradition of over eight decades of the American models is very high, and ‘Merge și-asa’, even if it manages to create emotion or smiles at times, also highlights how long the road is still to go.
The main character of the movie could also be a Disney movie hero. Giani, a Roma boy from Bucharest during ww2 years, has a chance to listen to a record by the famous French jazz Manouche guitarist Django Reinhardt and decides that this kind of music will be what he will do in life. He buys – or rather receives, after a healthy bargain – a guitar from the Jewish owner of a music store in Lipscani and starts a trip across war-torn Europe to Paris to meet his idol. (By the way – one of the historical inaccuracies of the film is that all the properties were confiscated from the Jews and the Jewish owner could not have kept a store during ww2). The trip between Bucharest and Paris is marked by dangers and various encounters, the most interesting of which is the one with the Jewish artists of a traveling circus in Moscow – (why weren’t they enlisted in the war?) – together with whom the boy sings the most interesting musical number of the film, combining Russian songs with jazz Manouche. The journey has its charm and at the end is the City of Lights and a new-old love for the coming to age teenager. The film proposes two alternative endings (a fashion in recent Romanian cinema, see also at Radu Jude), with the director and the production team playing the role of deus-ex-machina.
What I liked? The topic and the approach, of course. The film looks very good visually. It is beautifully drawn, and the main hero, Giani, with his dark skin and big, black and questioning eyes would fit perfectly in terms of graphics in the gallery of beautiful Disney heroes. All characters have individuality and expressiveness. The colors are beautiful and suitable for both the urban landscapes of Bucharest and Paris and the natural landscapes of Europe that the hero crosses. The music is excellently performed, and we can only regret that the two authors (Norwegian Stian Vagen Nielsen and Radu Captari) did not compose a catchy musical theme that could be remembered and associated with the film. What I liked less? The title seems uninspired to me, and I hope that something more suitable will be found for the international distribution. It refers more to the pretext of ‘film in film’ which should be a secondary theme. In addition, it may inadvertently allude to a superficiality of the approach, which, although criticizable elsewhere, should not be associated with an important issue such as diversity or anti-discrimination, historically and today. The authors wanted to make the film accessible to children and at the same time win the interest of the parents who will accompany them in the cinema theaters. The result is confusing, as the effect may be different from the desired one. Children will not understand the various quotes from famous movies (from Hollywood classics to video game heroes) and parents risk being quickly bored by the overly simplistic and obviously demonstrative story.
‘Merge și-asa’ is being released at a time when World War II and the Holocaust are ‘hot’ themes on children’s cinema screens. It comes to screens shortly after ‘Where’s Anne Frank’ by Ari Folman and ‘Charlotte’ by the French couple Tahir Rana and Éric Warin. It could ride the wave of interest they have triggered, and perhaps will do this to some extent. The film has enough qualities to indicate an additional direction, still little explored, on which Romanian cinema can develop.