Review of the film Scara by Vlad Păunescu
Over the past few decades, Vlad Păunescu has been known in Romania primarily as the country’s most successful film producer, and as the director and founder of the most important and longest-established film studio in post-December Romania: Castel Film. Of course, film buffs have not forgotten that Vlad Păunescu is also a leading cinematographer, responsible for the visuals in some of the defining films of our cinema, such as Concurs, Faleze de nisip and Dreptate în lanțuri by Dan Pița, Return from Hell and Flames on Treasures by Nicolae Mărgineanu, Miss Aurica and Those Who Pay with Their Lives by Șerban Marinescu, and A Wanderer in the Path of Wolves by Constantin Vaeni.
If we add to all this the more than one hundred international productions coordinated at Castel Film, including several notable titles (such as Cold Mountain, The Train of Life and Borat), we can say that Vlad Păunescu is one of the most accomplished filmmakers in Romanian cinema, from whom no one would have expected any further twist of fate.
But lo and behold, in 2015, at an age which for many creators marks the zenith or even the beginning of the twilight years, the master Vlad Păunescu returns to the set, this time as a ‘total auteur’, as they say – director, producer and co-screenwriter – with the topical drama Live, the story of a fearless TV producer confronted with political corruption in the media industry, within which she struggles not only to survive but also to preserve what remains of Romanian identity. Rarely do such ambitious and highly topical subjects receive the treatment they deserve in our contemporary cinema.
The talented producer and director of photography’s move into directing was not a passing whim, but stemmed from a need to bring to light important life stories, rooted in emotion, dramatic tension, a connection to immediate reality and a keen sensitivity to injustice – in short: from the pressing need for both artistic and civic expression. We sense that, from this point onwards, the filmmaker’s stake is no longer measured in terms of success and profitability, but is something loftier.
This initial formulation of his ars poetica, still unpolished, would be enriched and refined a few years later with the memorable film Scara, which premiered at the Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2021, where it was also nominated for Best Romanian Film; it was also nominated in three categories at the Gopo Awards in 2022 (set design, original music, make-up and hairstyling). The film is a poignant drama of conscience exploring the artist’s plight, set against the backdrop of the Romanian theatre scene before and after the December Revolution and the political upheavals of the same period.
Made with great passion and professionalism, Scara is conceived as a tribute by screenwriter Constantin Chelba and Vlad Păunescu to the Romanian theatre, which became a platform for the defence of freedom of thought in the final years of Ceaușescu’s dictatorship, and, in particular, to the peerless actor with a peerless destiny, Dragoș Pâslaru, who over the years became the monk Valerian. In fact, the screenplay – the film’s primary strength (alongside direction, performance, cinematography and music) – revolves around the main character’s erratic existential journey, swinging dangerously between ecstasy and self-destruction, as he converts to the faith: the ambitious actor Andrei Avram, masterfully portrayed by the young and equally talented Eduard Trifa.
The organic way in which the fate of the untamed Andrei intertwines and resonates with the fate of 1980s Romanian theatre, as well as with that of a country strangled by the absurdity of the final years of Ceaușescu’s totalitarian regime, and subsequently shaken by the violence and chaos of the transition, lends a unique power to this film, in which artistic sublimity and political grotesqueness go hand in hand, shocking consciences – as Lucian Pintilie once hoped – whilst also fusing, in a unique osmosis, different layers of life, the organic interconnection of which few people perceive.
All of this, without a doubt, testifies to the exceptional achievement of the screenplay and direction first and foremost, but also of the entire creative team, from the acting (which I shall discuss below), to the set design (Sorin Dima), the music (Vasile Șirli) and cinematography (Alexandru Sterian), all brought together by Vlad Păunescu’s managerial flair. Rarely, very rarely have I seen in Romanian cinema all the creative departments come together so harmoniously to produce a truly powerful work, including for younger generations.
The key to this organic unity lies, first and foremost, in the shared vision of the team’s ‘heavyweights’, united by the same life experiences and by their ‘emotional and intellectual connection to the world of theatre’, in order to pay ‘a tribute to friends past and present’ – as composer Vasile Șirli 1 explains in the interview ‘Dialogues without Notes’, conducted by journalist Ioan Big for zileșinopți.ro 2.
Even though we are talking about a tribute, there is nothing bombastic or nostalgic about this film, which is full of life and transformative energy; on the contrary: the film evokes an era, with all its joys, sorrows and twists and turns, passionately and intelligently embracing the characters’ destinies and thus managing to recapture all the emotional depth and complexity of the experiences on stage and beyond, from behind the scenes of the theatre and of history in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
But, beyond the historical and professional contexts—however vibrantly and faithfully the atmosphere is rendered—a period film centred on an iconic hero needs a big heart, one that beats to the rhythm of values that remain ever-relevant, to captivate and thus reach the audience. That heart – that is, the dramatic core of the film Scara – is the story of the play The Karamazovs, staged by Dan Micu in 1981, based on a dramatisation by Horia Lovinescu of Dostoevsky’s work at the Nottara Theatre in Bucharest, a productionlandmark in the history of Romanian theatre, in which Dragoș Pâslaru himself starred and for which Vasile Șirli composed the incidental music. In fact, several actors from the cast of the 1981 production appear in the film Scara, as theatre critic Mircea Morariu notes in a review 3.
In The Karamazovs, Andrei Avram’s genius meets Alyosha Karamazov: a role that changes his destiny and brings him closer to God. Speaking in glowing terms of the 1981 production, the same Mircea Morariu describes Dragoș Pâslaru as “absolutely extraordinary, not only in the role of Alyosha Karamazov […], not only as Horia Sima in The Wanderer Among Wolves, Constantin Vaeni’s film (a role for which he was heavily criticised, and these criticisms are meticulously detailed)’4, in Scara.
The tension of preparing for the performance, with its frantic rehearsals that test the actors’ nerves and every inner resource, confronting them with their own light and darkness, followed by the drama of its arbitrary banning by an order from above – all of this forms the film’s most intense emotional and thematic core. Memorable and superbly constructed visually are the clashes between the sarcastic, earthy Valentin Teodosiu – alias George Constantin in 1981, alias Fyodor Karamazov – and the fiery, incandescent Eduard Trifa – Alyosha, whose radiant, protean physicality drives the film’s emotional magma. The clashes of mentality between the two, centring on faith and atheism, are heightened by the fantastical-expressionist set design of the play, faithfully reproduced from the 1981 production – a major visual asset of the film, sensitively brought to life by Alexandru Sterian’s cinematography. Equally exceptional is the casting of the incomparable Horațiu Mălăele as the theatre’s blind director, an ambiguous and complex role, conveyed through sparse dialogue with subtle parabolic undertones.
The same syncopated journey of the production The Karamazovs explains the protagonist’s oscillation between ecstasy and agony, his refuge in alcohol and a fleeting romance, his existential disorientation, followed in the early 1990s by his wholehearted civic commitment to the ‘University Square’ movement, where he became one of the most enthusiastic speakers and where he was caught unawares by the devastating impact of the miners, summoned to Bucharest to suppress the so-called ‘Legionary destabilisation’ and who, mistaking him for the commander of the Iron Guard, as portrayed in Vaeni’s film, beat him until he was left in a coma.
It is a testament to the screenwriter’s and director’s genius that they manage to follow this meandering narrative thread coherently through the various aspects of Andrei Avram’s life – artistic, family and romantic, civic and, towards the end, even mystical-existential – without losing control of the emotional flow, right up to the moment of conversion through suffering and self-rediscovery, following his miraculous return from the clutches of death. This is the meaning of the spiritual ‘staircase’ that gives the film its title.
There is a valuable, yet rather overlooked, film in our recent cinema: A False Treatise on the Salvation of the Soul by Nicolae Mărgineanu. This, too, explores the pain and injustices of the communist era and centres on the story of one salvation – or indeed several – achieved through the acceptance of suffering and forgiveness. I believe that, inspired by the exemplary model of Dragoș Pâslaru, Constantin Chelba and Vlad Păunescu set out to construct a story that could be read as ‘a short treatise on the artist’s salvation’. It is no coincidence that Vlad Păunescu dedicated this film ‘to all theatre-makers’: this is in fact the epithet of Saint Filimon the Martyr, ‘the protector of actors’, the patron saint of the monastery founded in the mountains by the pious monk Valerian. And because it had to bear a simple, evocative and unpretentious name, the film was called ‘The Staircase’.
I was overjoyed when, at the end of the screening in November 2025 in Iași, as part of the Quo Vadis International Film Festival, to which the film had been invited, the audience remained in deep silence for several minutes, stunned by emotion, even after the end credits had rolled, before bursting into prolonged, standing ovations. Many viewers, even among the very young, who had not experienced the hardships of the communist regime, admitted that they had cried or that they had rarely experienced such transformative emotions in the cinema, and certainly never in Romanian cinema. In the discussions following the screening, a young philosophy student expressed her deepest praise for the film’s makers – who, unfortunately, were unable to attend – saying that Scara must be seen by the whole of Romania and, in particular, by the younger generation. And so it is.
- 1
Nominated for the 2022 Gopo Award for Best Original Film Music for the film Scara.
- 2
https://zilesinopti.ro/2022/05/01/dialoguri-fara-note-vasile-sirli-cred-cu-adevarat-ca-stapanirea-limbajului-muzical-este-esentiala.
- 3
The Ladder, or the Quest for the Self and Salvation, Mircea Morariu, 22 March 2023, https://www.contributors.ro/scara-sau-gasirea-sinelui-si-a-mantuirii.
- 4
Ibid.