I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians

This is heady stuff, but never daunting.

The movie's refusal to dumb down its ideas, truncate its arguments or skimp on the power of its own verbiage is precisely what makes it so mesmerizing.

Director Radu Jude presents a simultaneously playful and intense meditation on the ways in which recreating the past can obscure history's meaning as one gets caught up in the making of illusion.

Like other contemporary Romanian filmmakers, Jude is well attuned to human absurdities, especially those of pompous public officials.

Until its devastating final scenes, the way "I Do Not Care" makes its points is discursive rather than dramatic.

Barbarians is, in other words, anything but subtle.

...narratively, Jude’s film achieves little...

A brilliantly conceived film.

What gives it nearly all its bite is the big questions it asks about history, and representing history through art.

It is a layered, masterful work that proves that artistic mediums carry tremendous weight, and that what audiences bring to them will determine exactly how much they will take away.