National Review, March 1st, 1993
'IF WE have a child," says Nela to her lover, Mitica, "it will be either a genius or an idiot." "If it turns out normal," answers Mitica, "I'll strangle it with my bare hands." So ends The Oak, the movie with which the Rumanian director Lucian Pintilie may rightfully claim to be the heir apparent of those great Italian masters, Fellini and De Sica. It concerns Rumania during the last phase of the Ceausescu dictatorship, but it applies equally to any country in which a despot with a servile bureaucracy at his command holds sway. And there still are, and perhaps always will be, such countries ...
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