Hârtia va fi albastra

It may take a few lines to get this review going, because this movie has left me speechless. The first word I think of to apply to it is beautiful - not beautiful in any ordinary sense, just exquisitely beautiful movie-making.

Paper tells a thoroughly believable story of very ordinary people - people who feel to me like family and friends even though theirs is a nation and a culture and a language about as far from mine as possible - ordinary people just like me, in unbelievably extraordinary and terrifying circumstances. And yet it is a true story, and what is even more amazing: it FEELS true. Watching it is as close to living it, as close to actually myself BEING one of the characters on screen, as I have ever experienced while watching any movie in the 55+ years I have been watching movies.

This is a great work of art, and an important aspect of its greatness is its smallness, its intimacy, its consummate accessibility: the way it draws me INTO itself instead of dazzling me with technology or cinematic trickery. It is simple; it is real; it is harrowing; it is transcendent.

In just over 91 minutes it opens to me an astonishing place called Romania and an astonishingly courageous and beautiful people called Romanians. And after taking my heart and my mind on a journey like none I have ever experienced before, over the end credits plays one of the most beautiful songs ever written sung by one of the greatest singers who ever lived.

I wish I could express more effectively how profoundly I thank God and Radu Muntean for this movie.