Death of Mr. Lazarescu

The film Death of Mr. Lazarescu follows the hospitalization of an old grumpy lonely man. He gets thrown around from hospital to hospital always placed on the side-lines of the waiting rooms due to a serious crash that happened earlier. The doctors are all too concerned with the crash victims and dealing with their own problems to take care of Mr. Lazarescu and, as a result, his illnesses are left untreated. One lesson that is stressed is that everyone needs to care and be cared for. The film starts off with Mr. Lazarescu taking care of his cats, and as the film progresses we learn that his daughter has left him to live in Canada and his wife died many years ago. The cats have become his thing to take care of. There is no one else for him to pour his life and care into, so he makes someone out of his cats. Even as he leaves to go into the ambulance he makes sure his cats are okay. So he has someone to care for, but now what about someone to care for him?

When the paramedic arrives at his house they are both cold towards each other. The scene is dark lighting, the dialogue is short and snappy, even the set is dirty and bland looking. This makes you think that this paramedic will be just one more face in his life. But as the story continues you find out that she is just the person he needs in his life. She gives him care and grows warm to him until eventually she is fighting to get him the best care possible. She stays with him until the end and uses the friends she has to get him into tests faster or better care. She connects with him on a deeper level due to the little chats Mr. Lazarescu has with her in the back of her ambulance.

The film also makes a strong statement on the way patients (and staff) are treated in hospitals. All the hospitals except two treat their staff and Mr. Lazarescu like crap. He is just a thorn in their sides that they wish to remove as quickly as possible by passing him off to another doctor. The second hospital and fourth hospital they visit show Mariana some kindness and take her voice into opinion, but in the first and third she is thrown to the side and told not to interfere unless she is a doctor and has a degree. If the doctors were smart they would listen to her, the patient is half unconscious and she knows much more about the Mr. Lazarescu and his pains than the doctor at this point. The nurses also are not treated well, they are ordered around while the doctor pokes and runs little tests on the patient that only requires them to watch. The doctors appear to consider the nurses their slaves. By making a statement about the hospital hierarchy system the director may hope to change that and make the staff’s job much more enjoyable.