Bleak. Medal of Honor was bleak. You may think you know bleak, but until you’ve seen this movie, set in Romania during the Soviet era, you don’t know jack. If I had to live in a place like that for more than five minutes I think my heart would permanently harden like cement.

The movie’s about Ion I. Ion, an old pensioner who lives with a wife so estranged from him that she doesn’t speak a word during the first half of the film, no matter how much he tries to wheedle one out of her. I’ve never seen a woman treat the man who lives with her so indifferently. Eventually she talks about the reason for her disdain, and I’d have to say it’s a pretty damned good one, but man that woman knew how to be cold.

The thread that ties the whole movie together is the cheap Soviet-style medal that Ion Ion gets from the government for his service during the war. “What exactly is this medal for?” he asks a snarky government drone at the Ministry of Defense, who tells him to stop asking her stupid questions before she goes back to playing Minesweeper on her office computer.

Eventually he gets an answer from the government, but not only is it the answer he expected, by the time he gets it he’s told himself and everyone who will sit still long enough to listen to him that it’s for shooting a captured cannon in a random direction, more or less toward some fleeing Germans. His story and the medal become so important to him that he can hardly talk about anything else, even as he’s tries, and fails repeatedly, to make up with his wife and their son.

I’d have to admit this is a good film. It was written well, acted well and shot very well. I’m only sorry it was such a monumentally huge bummer. I’m a Rogers & Hammerstein kind of guy. I like happy movies. This was not a happy movie, but it was a very good film. Four out of Five.