The
Soldier’s Book (Cartea
Soldatului) is a short 2018 documentary directed by Marius Donici and Doina
Rusti. It uses the find of a novel, the
margins of which had been used as a notebook by a soldier during the First
World War, to tell the story of the annotator, insofar as it can be pieced
together from the clues provided by the notes.
The volume was found under a shed
where it sat alongside other documents.
It is the Romanian translation of a romantic novel, Jean d'Agrève (1898), by the French writer Eugène-Melchior de
Vogüé. The notes had possibly been
written by a Ştefan Anghelescu, but using the nom-de-plume Fănică.
The film is presented in a bitty
manner, using a mix of talking heads, photographs and actors, interweaving
Fănică’s story with Romania’s changing fortunes during the Great War. It was a time of peril, but one that
ultimately forged the nation. The evidence provided by Fănică’s jottings is
supplemented by archival research to build a picture of a seminal moment in
Romanian history.
There was a low literacy rate in
Romania at the time so Fănică’s ability to read and write was fairly unusual in
a working man. An army reservist, he was
a mechanic on the railway in peacetime so possessing skills highly sought after
in the army, meaning he did not serve on the front line. He was also a painter and a traveller, and there
are hints he was gregarious.
The last is suggested by the many
names, of men and women but mostly women, which feature in his notes, some of
whom can be identified from historical records.
One in particular, Ana, probably Ana Simionescu, is prominent, and Fănică
addresses her directly; but there are names of about 40 other women. The precise nature of his relationship with
them is unclear.
Romania was hard-pressed by the
Central Powers, on both north and south borders, and after initial successes
suffered reverses, not aided by the Russian retreat, which knocked it out of
the war until (literally) the day before the Armistice. Fănică was possibly taken prisoner at the
Battle of Mărășești in September 1917 and held at Severin.
His final entry was made in early
June 1918 and what happened to him afterwards is unclear. However, one of the interviewees recounts
discovering a landscape painting recently in a second-hand bookshop, dated 1920
and signed S. Anghelescu. Perhaps it was
the same Fănică, having survived the hostilities and returned to his old
life. One would like to think so. Ana, with whom he seems to have fallen out,
disappears from history, with no record of either marriage or death.
At only 35 minutes the film feels
overly compressed, jumping from commentator to commentator, graphics flashing
by, with scarcely a chance to absorb the information. Despite having the course of Romania’s war
sketched in by a series of academics, it helps to have some prior knowledge of
this theatre of the conflict and Romania’s role within it.
However, the film does compile a
personal story of sorts from the fragments, one that could so easily have been
lost in the crumbling pages of a forgotten novel deteriorating under a shed. In disinterring Fănică’s notes, the filmmakers
have also performed a useful service in highlighting a part of the First World
War that has tended to be overlooked.
The documentary is available from
Cinepub on YouTube, with English-language subtitles. Cinepub’s page on the film, with a link, is
here:
