Simple and at the same time intricate, like a bundle of wires. Pavel Cuzuioc’s new film “Please hold the line”.

Sometimes comical.

Sincere. 

Chaotic. 

Pavel Cuzuioc’s new film Please hold the line with its Romanian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian,  Russian, English, and French dialogues echoed in me with the sound of native land. The question that makes human minds wander in loops and wind up kilowatts of mental efforts. 

How far are we from each other? 

How real is the virtual connection established between us, generated by towers, antennas, and cables? 

How lonely are we in this illusion?

Filmed in the format of a documentary on the life of Eastern Europeans and their longing for the Internet connection, the film struck me first with its truthfulness. 

«What always matters to me are the people».

Grandmothers from Moldovan towns complaining about life. Bulgarian roadside café workers caught trap of a cellular company. Ukrainian anarchist artists, treating masters of communication with vodka and discussing the themes of the universe. Each of the protagonists itself is a universe. Shown as real, truthful, but difficult to understand and far away. «I simply wanted to show them the way they were. I want to make it very clear that we are all equal, and yet each person constitutes a world of his own, an individual planet. No matter what sophisticated means of communication are available, we still understand each other with great difficulty because everyone has their own perspective on life and an individual way of expressing himself/herself», believes the author. 

Caught at their most sincere

The presence of the camera is not felt at all. This is due to the very setting of the camera: each scene was filmed as if surreptitiously, with a peeping lens captured the ordinary lives of ordinary people. It was this sincerity and ordinariness that hooked me the most. 

«It creates an aesthetic where things move within the frame rather than the camera looking for them. The less fuss you make about things like that, the more relaxed the protagonists are in their behavior. You have to be very sure about exactly what you want», comments Cuzuioc.

Long walks along the essence

In terms of plot composition, the film seemed to me rather confusing, not leading to any kind of audience discovery. But it is understandable, the absence of a script, as the director claims, and the unknown waiting behind every of around 200 doors on which the team knocked during the shot hunt, explains this lack of semantic development. 

Witnessing voyages of telecommunications technicians from one door to another, Pavel developed a way to collect and bind the shots: «My protagonists, telecommunications experts on fieldwork, were tour guides through society for me. I realized it would be best just to accompany the technicians and wait until they came across interesting customers and characters. I began the project with a number of ideas, and as time passed it became more focused and took on its own shape. The extraordinary among the banality».

Each next scene does not follow from the previous one, but, as it were, repeats the message encrypted in it, thereby strengthening it. 

Coding-Decoding

The message that I decoded looks like this: the illusion of being connected by the world Internet does not fulfill its original goal of our rapprochement, but, on the contrary, separates us and polarizes us at different ends of the telephone wire.

Plunging into a lonely state of waiting for something, as during the establishment of a telephone connection, or waiting for the loading of a web page, personifies the expectation of life changes that seem to be about to happen. 

Constant waiting state. 

Constant loneliness. 

Earning for connection, failure of communication.