What a dire spectacle this was!
The film succeeds in providing a glimpse into the grotesque Bulgarian reality of today. Ignorance, crude behaviour and manners, dishonesty and utter lack of empathy pervade every aspect of life; throughout the whole film you will not hear the words "please" or "thank you", as if they have been erased from the language. Harking back to the inherited values from 50 years of the "Socialist paradise" and thrown into acute focus, you see the disinterested police force, which nevertheless doesn't fail to be brutish, the corrupt doctors who defraud the health system, the unscrupulous new age mystic charlatans praying on the poor, the brainless "cultural workers" of the socialist age, the incompetent new "professionals" who can't turn in a piece of quality work....all this is convincingly bound together through the incessant lies of the son and the imbecilic delusions of the father.
Cinematically, the film is sound, with good all round performances and unsparing cinematography, but as a Bulgarian myself I wish I had not seen it; it disheartens you so!
Review of The Father
