Bless You, Prison

(This DVD has no warning that it contains simulated torture scenes. I would rate it 'R' for these scenes.)

Unjustly arrested for her political beliefs, Nicoleta Valery-Grossu begins a journey through the Communist Romanian prison system in 1949. The faith in God which she discovers in her prison cell changes her, and her cellmates, completely. The director sought to portray Nicoleta's story just as she wrote it. He succeeds in this low-tech, earthy production, which offers several options for viewing. The English dubbing works surprisingly well, but subtitles will be needed at the close of the final chapter.

It's a movie about communism, a movie about struggle, a movie about faith in God. Arrested for being a member of a democratic party, Nicoleta Valeria Bruteanu enters the Communist Romanian prisons in 1949, and remains detained until 1953. There she finds the time she needs to think about her mistakes in life and tries to regain her faith in God. Soon faith united all cell mates and helped them endure and in the end survive the horrors of the Communist prison system. The title of the movie is at the same time the conclusion of the story - the suffering in the prison brought Nicoleta closer to God, closer to people around her, made her a better person.

The movie its a little graphic, but the director was somewhat forced to include such scenes to be able to reveal the brutality of the tortures methods. The English dubbing works well and most actors did an excellent job. I highly recommend this movie to understand better the suffering which the people in Eastern Europe and Russia were forced to endure.

"I do not change my opinion from one week to another..." says the character who repeated her innocence and will be released in two weeks(some kind of wishful thinking). It's just one of those thousands of women, imprisoned, all innocent. The communists were in power in Romania, from 1945 to 1989, and they were really the only God on earth, they decided if you live or not. It's just a glimpse of the huge drama that meant the experiment called Communism in Romania = Genocide. Maria Ploae, one of the few true gifted actresses in Romania, is distinguished in the role of that who was Nicole Valéry-Grosu, author of the autobiographical novel after the film was made. Dorina Lazar is good as the Prison Director and Ecaterina Nazare is good too as another inmate who commits suicide by hanging. Director, Nicolae Margineanu is Libra like me, so he's a very prudent and balanced man and artist and he knows well his job.