Ninja Film Review: B-Movies for Freedom
Created | Updated May 1, 2016
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B-Movies for Freedom
Chuck Norris poate sa aplaude cu o singura mana.
Romanian Chuck Norris joke which translates as, 'Chuck Norris can clap with one hand.' (It's very Zen.)
You probably had to be there, and I was. On a train out of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in the hot summer of 1980, headed for Vienna on a dusty ride through the Hungarian puszta, I found that an elderly lady in a babushka had my seat and – reservation or no reservation – I was probably going to have to stand in the aisle for the next 20 or so hours.
Rescue appeared in the form of the Young Pioneers, a lively brigade of kids from the communist version of Cub Scouts and Brownies, whose adult leader kindly arranged for them all to move over and let me join them in their compartment. We laughed, joked, and shared garlic all the way to Vienna. When he learned I was American, the leader was delighted.
'Now, kids,' he encouraged them. 'It's your chance! Ask Mr Gheorgheni anything you want to know about America!'
One twelve-year-old boy knew exactly what was on their minds. 'Who shot J.R.?' he wanted to know.
I am ashamed to say this, but I had no idea. (I lived in Germany. Dallas didn't run there for another year.)
All of this is to explain that yes, it's true: Western film and television were influential in Romania in the 1980s. Which is all the more remarkable because most of the time, official Romanian television consisted of a couple of hours of propaganda per day. So where were the Romanians getting all of their Western pop culture literacy?
From 1985 on, it turns out, it was…video smugglers. A black market network that worked exactly the way drug dealers do (but shouldn't): back alley exchanges of VHS tapes. Hot stuff: Rocky, Missing in Action, Back to the Future, Missing in Action II…which makes clear why the title of this film is so telling.
Chuck Norris vs. Communism isn't a story about Chuck Norris, appealing as he was to the youngsters of Romania. Ilinca Calugareanu's absorbing documentary is about what a brave, clever, talented woman did with all this B-movie wonder. Her name was Irina Nistor, and she voiced over 3,000 films during the Ceausescu years. That means, folks, she provided all of the dialogue in simultaneous translation. Irina became the voice of the films. And the voice of Romanian resistance. She wouldn't translate all the swear words, though. (She was the built-in filther.) She rendered most obscenities as 'du-te dracu', 'go to hell'.
Chuck Norris vs. Communism provides dramatic recreations of the dangers faced by Nistor and her boss, video smuggler Teodor Zamfir. Amusingly (but understandably), each thought the other worked for the Securitate (secret police), and expected to be arrested at some point. I won't give away a plot point, but they were in for a bit of a surprise there. Suffice it to say that they were able to keep going and outlast the dictatorship.
In between the action segments, group interviews with Romanian artists and film critics who were themselves children of this underground pop culture explain the effect the films had on them: how they were inspired to practice the heroics of Rocky Balboa or Colonel Braddock. Film excerpts are used to illustrate points. The sensitive may want to close their eyes for the rat scene, but the Romanians' explanation of what they learned from the rat scene is priceless…
Like I said, you probably had to be there. But if you weren't, and you'd like to know how extraordinarily potent cheap cinema can be in the right hands, there's Chuck Norris vs. Communism. It's available on Netflix in the US. The rest of you may need to smuggle a DVD from somewhere, possibly a shady-looking dive in your neighbourhood marked 'video store'. Just don't let the cops see you…oh, wait. That's legal everywhere now.
What's that you say? Yes, yes, it's in Romanian. Alas, Irina Nistor won't read the movie to you in English. But there are subtitles.
Go see this one. You'll be glad you did.
Trailer
In case you want to see the trailer, here it is.
You can also read an interview with Ilinca Calugareanu by PBS.
