Uppercase Print

The film, a rousing, form-bending new feature by the Romanian auteur Radu Jude, rails at the tyrannical potential of language — particularly when backed by government power — to suffocate people’s freedoms.

Working with Carbunariu, Jude offers a spare, visually striking evocation of the methods of Ceausescu’s secret police, the Securitate, in its pursuit and punishment of a young dissident.

Shouting in all-caps about unions and shortages of food, Călinescu symbolizes the power of individuals that dare to discern from their own personal trenches, regardless of how insignificant they may seem.

This may be one of Jude’s minor works, but it delivers a quietly devastating emotional punch.

It is a fierce and impassioned denunciation of evil.

Jude, with his multiple dimensions of inquiry and imagination, poses philosophical questions about conscience and consciousness, media consumption and social order, that reach far beyond the case and era at hand to challenge the deceptions and delusions of ostensible present-day democracies.

In Uppercase Print, the fangs of the past are sharp, but muzzled.