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Forest of the Hanged Movie Review

Forest of the Hanged is a 1965 Romanian drama film directed by Liviu Ciulei and starring Victor Rebengiuc. It’s a beautifully crafted, sophisticated film.

In 1916 as an officer in the Habsburg Army ethnic Romanian Apostol Bologa is torn between remaining loyal to the Habsburgs or deserting to the Romanian Army across enemy lines. This movie is often regarded as one of the masterpieces of Romanian cinema, and while I personally did not fully love it, I did appreciate it for everything that it did right, which is a lot.

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This material stems from a novel, which can definitely be seen in extensive dialogue throughout. There are numerous conversations and discussions about war and morality that the characters have and most are smart and moving. My issue is that in the second half those discussions took the bulk of the screen time, resulting in a bit of padding. It’s an overlong movie at almost three hours and it feels like that.

With that being said, the reason why this feature works lies in its technical aspects. What Liviu Ciulei did here was truly remarkable. It’s easy to see why he was bestowed with the directing award at Cannes because he directed this movie with so much style and conviction. The acting performances are also uniformly superb and the characterization is solid albeit not great. The protagonist’s moral dilemma was so well realized.

Forest of the Hanged is worth seeing for its audio-visuals alone. The cinematography is simply magnificent. It’s so crisp, so polished and ultimately timeless. The camera movements are so admirably fluid for the time, making for such a busy and artistic viewing experience.

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There is also that superb score that was pleasingly atmospheric and even eerie at times. The production design is terrific too, perfectly conveying the terror of this location, and the hanging sight was quite disturbing. The movie has such a perfectly conveyed somber and tragic tone that made it highly memorable. The film also is thematically rich as it explores the ideas of human morality and national identity, and how all of these ideas are at a serious risk during major wars. I just wished that the pacing was brisker and the runtime shorter.