(I feel so much less self-conscious about my profoundly terrible spelling since I've begun reading Sean Guillory, whose terrible spelling is really in a league of its own.)

I don't know what religion has to do with anything in this diary.  Furthermore, I am very sensitive to the whole "Communism = Complete criminalization of all religion and complete censorship of the arts."  As with everything in life, it was never so simple.  The extent to which these spheres of life were repressed varied from regime to regime, from region to region, and depending upon the the perceived motivations of the participants.  I've read countless stories of people allowed to practice religion or do their art in the privacy of their own homes so long as they kept it to themselves and otherwise followed the rules, or people who were allowed to do so publicly under close scrutiny to make the regime appear "tolerant," a kind of tokenism.  Of course, the moment you fell out of favor or offended the wrong person, you could wind up dead, imprisoned or hospitalized.  Anyway I've never gotten the impression that the lives of most people living in Communist Europe for most of the 20th century were depressing because they were devoid of the intangibles that give our lives depth and meaning.  

These films are "depressing" because they deal with situations not peculiar to Romania or the former Eastern Bloc - abortion, painful death.  And they are dealt with without any of the pretty packaging or comforting ideologies peddled by the predominant regimes of our lives...

Also, beauty is subjective - the in the eye of the beholder, and takes an infinite number of forms, and is too often a pawn in cultural chauvinism.

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.