The house in “Acasa, My Home” is a wild and swampy extension on the outskirts of Bucharest, an abandoned reservoir inhabited mainly by birds, fish and insects. At the beginning of this documentary, directed by Radu Ciorniciuc, the only resident humans are Gica Enache, his wife, Niculina, and their nine children. Surrounded by chickens, pigs, pigeons and dogs, they live in a proud and occasionally belligerent challenge to “civilization”, a word that Gica utters with disdain.
Children run through the reeds, catch fish with their bare hands, fight swans and perform household chores. The scene is not entirely pastoral, however, and Gica is not exactly Henry David Thoreau. He is a temperamental patriarch, partly anarchist and partly autocratic, protecting his family from state power with his own sometimes tyrannical authority. When confronted by social workers, police and other officials, he is not always diplomatic. At one point, he threatens to catch fire. “These are my children and I can kill them if I want to” may not be the best thing to say to child welfare agents.
Filmed over four years, “Acasa” tells the complicated and bittersweet story of Gica’s defeat. When the Romanian government designates the area as a protected natural park – supposedly the largest in a large European city – the Enaches are expelled. They dismantle their house, a large structure made of blankets and plastic sheets spread over a makeshift wooden frame, and move into an apartment. Children, with haircuts, shoes and new clothes, go to school regularly for the first time. The eldest son, Vali, finds a girlfriend and claims to be independent from his father.
Does this represent progress or catastrophe? For Gica, the answer is clear: everything he values has been taken away. But while Ciorniciuc sees him with evident sympathy and respect, “Acasa” is not an uncritical or romantic tale of paradise lost. You can see park administrators, government ministers and municipal bureaucrats through Gica’s eyes – as smiling, condescending agents of a force that disturbs their peace and threatens their identity. You can also see it from their perspective, as a man subjecting his family to dangerous and unhygienic conditions that need to be protected from their own impulses.
The film is not static. It is dialectical – it constructs its narrative as an argument between two opposing positions, neither of which is fully embraced. There is a nobility in Niculina and Gica when they try to resist the power of a state convinced of its own benevolence. And the actions of the state are not entirely irrational. It is not as simple as defending individualism against the government, or being in favor of parks, schools and a decent social order.
All of this is very abstract, but “Acasa” is full of ideas because it contains a lot of life. It is intimate and analytical, a sensitive portrait of real people undergoing enormous changes and a meditation on what that change can mean. He explores something fundamental in the human condition, a basic conflict between the desire for freedom and the tendency to organize – an argument, finally, about the meaning of home.
Acasa, my home
Not evaluated. In Romanian, with subtitles. Execution time: 1 hour and 26 minutes. In theaters and at the Kino Marquee. Consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies in theaters.