2008, Cristian Mungiu
Cristian Mungiu’s wrenching 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a powerful story of a woman (Anamaria Marinca) in 1980s Romania who helps her friend (Laura Vasiliu) obtain a black market abortion. It’s a premise ripe for dramatics, but the power of it comes from how understated Mungiu plays the whole thing. There isn’t an ounce of melodrama or artificiality in here, but rather an innovative bluntness to telling it that made everything feel much more real and, as a result, more intense.
The film is essentially a series of long interactions, where Mungiu places the camera firmly in one section of the room and lets his actors play the entire scene without moving it. There’s no quick camera swirls or cinematic flare to give you any idea that what you are watching is a work of fiction. It’s a practically groundbreaking technique on his front and it produces a work of technical marvel, but also one of true emotions and character interactions. The actors aren’t allowed time to assess their every move, but instead have to go through many long takes of staying in this place they must put their mind in, living and breathing these characters to an incredibly authentic level.Anamaria Marinca guides the picture with a quiet resilience that is breathtaking, a woman who forces herself to go on even when she feels that she no longer can.
One of the many extended sequences features a scene with Marinca’s character at dinner with her boyfriend’s family. In this scene Mungiu places the camera at one end of the dinner table and leaves it there, while the family converses around Marinca and she sits with the full weight of the day’s events on her shoulders. It’s a breathtaking scene for multiple reasons. For one, the way that Mungiu places us at the dinner table as if we are just another member of this party creates this fascinating approach, almost as if we are another participant of the meal. The dialogue is quick and genuine, as the family goes back and forth debating politics, gender relations and education, all while Marinca sits silent, trying to grasp the weight of everything she has experienced. The way that she holds herself here is something to marvel out, living so vividly in this character without having to say a word.
It’s one of the very many impressive scenes that Mungiu creates in this startling, remarkably intense picture. The sheer lack of cinematic flare is to be admired in a big way, as he brings us into this real world where unpredictably and predictably no longer have any meaning. He brings you to a place where there aren’t any expectations as to where the story is going to take you. You aren’t waiting for the happy ending, but you aren’t waiting for the incredibly dour one either. It’s a world where anything can happen, because it’s true, and that’s what makes it all the more suspenseful.
A-
Film #75 of The 365 Film Challenge.
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