User Reviews

This fantastic documentary tells the story of Claudiu Crulic, a 33 yr old Romanian wrongfully accused of stealing the wallet of a Polish judge and his experience on hunger strike while imprisoned as an act of his innocents and demand for help from the Romanian consul that never comes. Told by Crulic, from beyond the grave, he recounts his life story up to his death with details on how he was in Italy at the time of the crime in Poland, his experience while on hunger strike and how prison doctors and the Romanian consul did nothing for his case nor well-being. A case that slipped through the prison cracks. To make it further infuriating, prison doctors claimed he was fine almost up to the very end when he is so emaciated he looked like a 70 yr old man instead of the youthful 33 yr old he was just a couple months prior. By the time prison doctors finally sent him to a hospital, he was so deteriorated his body was beyond medical repair and slowing dying. After his death receives international attention, all authorities and doctors involved denied responsibility and eventually let to the resignation of Romanian foreign minister. Though the film could be slow at times, it is brilliantly and powerfully depicted through various animation techniques of hand-drawn animation, cutouts from photographs, scanned documents, projection, stop motion and digital 3D that manages to hold the viewers attention and keeps them intrigued throughout.

"Crulic – The Path to Beyond" might not fit the standard definition of "documentary" as it uses animation to tell the true story of a Romanian immigrant who is falsely accused of a crime and imprisoned for it. The subject of the doc tells his tale from "beyond" and relates the facts of his case and its eventual resolution. Several styles of animation are used to illustrate Crulic's plight, his attempts to seek release, and his decision to go on a hunger strike to assert his innocence. The case is eventually dropped – because of the death of the accused.

"Crulic" tells its story in a relatively scant 70 minutes and it tells it well. Only two voices are heard (a narrators and Crulic's) but much more is told via the animation. The soft watercolor palettes may seem at odds with the harshness of the tale, but the contrast works. What may have been a very dry documentary holds the viewers attention visually and this allows the spoken words to resonate.

Sadly, Crulic's tale of "justice denied" is not an uncommon one.

www.worstshowontheweb.com

The artwork and production is excelent, above most high cost/high end animations, but for a Romanian that doesn't hate himself, the situation felt too common and hard to sympathize with.

The same story where the grass is always greener on the other side, where strangers value more than family, where ideology makes you blind to the obvious and poverty is the perfect excuse for your own shortcomings or mistakes.

Claudiu Crulic may be a victime of the Polish justice system, but foremost he is a victime of his own mind, as he basically sacrificed to improve the justice system in a foreign country, he fought to improve a society/reality that had no connection to him, one where he had no value or influence.