Pay it Forward

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days – THE Romanian film

16 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment

by anasanduleanu in Uncategorized

A cluttered table a tiny, ticking clock, an ash-tray with a still-smoking cigarette and a stack of study notes in a students’ hall of residence room. As the camera pulls away from the table, you see a girl with dark hair and a fragile, innocent temper sitting on a bed, smoking a cigarette.  Her name is Gabita (played by Laura Vasiliu) and she is 4 months 3 weeks and 2 days pregnant.  When the camera’s vision widens, you discover that there is another girl in the room, Otilia(Ana Maria Marinca), who is packing. Gradually it becomes clear that the young women aren’t packing for a weekend getaway, but for a clandestine meeting with an abortionist.

This is how the story of Mungiu’s film “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days” starts. After it was launched the film received an enthusiastic response from critics, earning a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 127 reviews), while also earning a 97% rating on Metacritic (based on 37 reviews). Jay Weissberg from Variety magazine said that the film was “pitch perfect and brilliantly acted; a stunning achievement for the Romanian cinematography”. Critics called it “the Romanian film“.

After winning the Palme d’Or prize at Cannes in 2007, nominations and awards kept coming. Mungiu’s film won Best European Film and Best European Director at the European Film Awards in 2007, Best European Film at the 23^rd Edition of the Goya Awards and the Hollywood World Award (Best film) at the Hollywood International Film Festival.

Although the Oscar committee discredited the foreign-film selection process, by eliminating this Romanian entry from the short list for an Academy Award, “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days” is among the best 100 films of the decade, according to a top published by the British daily newspaper The Times. Ranked 14th, the film directed by Cristian Mungiu is ahead of well known films from the last 10 years like: “Traffic,” “Lord of the Rings” or “Crash”.

Cristian Mungiu’s film is one of the most successful Romanian films, along with “The Death of Mister Lazarescu”, and “California Dreamin’”. “4 3 2” succeeded better than the others because it vibrates different chords in the viewer’s souls and on different planes. “Women will resonate with the story at a personal and national level resulted from the anti-abortion policies in Communist Romania and men will feel helpless all over again in front of that ruthless law that killed so many women,” says Cristian Mungiu.

The context of the movie

In 1966, a law that banned abortion was imposed in Romania. Abortion was considered an illegal act in a nation where women were called upon to breed as their patriotic duty.

The effect was immediate: up to 1970, there were four huge generations of children, a few times more numerous than the generations before 1966. The number of children in a classroom increased from 28 to 36. Even names were not enough for the number of children.

Soon, women started to go for illegal abortions. By the end of communism, according to the 1990 census, more than 500 000 women had died because of that. In that context, abortion lost any moral connotation and was rather perceived as an act of rebellion and resistance against the regime.

“Because of the pressure of the regime, women and families were so concerned about not being caught for making an illegal abortion that they didn’t give one minute of thought about the moral issue,” explains Cristian Mungiu.

The plot

Cristian Mungiu’s film “4 3 2” exposes this issue women had and the decay of human decency under communism. “The idea of the screenplay didn’t start from the idea of making a film about abortion. For me, it’s a film about responsibilities and decision making, and I think these are things which are very universal, and I believe that is why there is this sympathy for the film. Even in places where people don’t know much about what was going on in Romania, people still relate to this,” confesses Mungiu.

The action in “4 3 2″ unfolds in the course of a single day and night.

The two main characters, Otilla and Găbiţă share the same room in a student’s halls of residence. They are University colleagues in a small town in Romania, during the last years of communism.

Romania is under the rule of Ceausescu. Găbiţă is pregnant and she wants to make an abortion. Because this was illegal she turns in desperation to her roommate Otilia, who agrees to help her.

After she raises the money for the operation, Otilia meets up with the abortionist, mister Bebe, in order to settle down the details of the meeting.

After the abortion is done, the two women get into trouble because they don’t have enough money to pay mister Bebe. In order to get out of this situation, Otilia has to abandon her dignity. She chooses to sacrifice herself in order to save her friend. She offers herself to mister Bebe in order to pay for the abortion.

What critics say

Besides the shocking story of an artisanal abortion in a hotel room with no medical care, the film approaches two other important issues: how far a friendship between two women can go and what is the purpose of this cruel life experience they lived together.

The film is shot in cold, hard takes to match the cold, hard facts of life revealed on the screen. According to Irina Margareta Nistor, one of the most popular Romanian film critics, “Mungiu paints an extraordinarily detailed, rigorously unsentimental picture of the insignificant indignities and grotesque absurdities of ordinary Romanian life in the 1980s.”

Although the film’s purpose was to draw a realistic picture about the communist period, a lot of critics thought some scenes of the film were shocking and disturbing for the audience. One of these scenes is the emphasized shot of the recently aborted fetus lying in a plastic bag on the floor in the bathroom of the hotel room. This scene has become the most debated scene of the film.

Film critic Tudor Caranfil thinks that “while throughout the film Mungiu has shown an unquestionable intelligence in suggesting rather than showing, for this scene he takes the feelings of the audience hostage while lingering on a corpse. This was very dangerous.”

It was part of the story

Confronted with the critics about the fetus scene, Mungiu defended his production. “When I wrote the scenario, I thought I was going to show it, but later on I doubted myself, so I shot the scene two different ways, just to make sure that I had the option in postproduction. But once we were editing the film, it was obvious to me that it had to be there, because it is part of the story,” said the Romanian director.

Asked about the impact of the fetus scene, Ana Maria Marinca (who plays Otilia in the film) shares the director’s opinion. “For me, it’s the right thing at the right time. It’s about an author’s vision, and you don’t question that. That’s how we chose to show it to you. Those are the facts. This is what a fetus looks like. It’s not saying it’s wrong to have an abortion or it’s right. To me, it has something to do with the past and the future and how we understand them,” thinks Marinca.

The audience has the last word

Although, at some point critics were tough in commenting upon “4 3 2 Days,” people from all over the world gave positive feedbacks to the film.

“It is true, it is not a film for everyone.  It can be very strong for a sensible person, but it is a challenging and fascinating film. It made me feel like I was living during the Golden Age,”said Maria Muresan, 20 years old, when asked about Mungiu’s film.

“I must admit that the realistic view of the movie makes it disturbing and very difficult to go through, but once you get to understand the whole purpose of the film, you become more and more intrigued by its plot,” said one of Mungiu’s fans from America, Dean Mencher.

The purpose

Abortion is more than a metaphor in “4 3 2.” “This film is the most persuasive anti-abortion argument in any form I’ve ever seen, heard, or read,” said Tudor Caranfil when asked about the purpose of this kind of movie.

There are no fancy shots, no special effects, no quick cuts. Mungiu sticks to a rule of one shot per scene, throughout the film. Visuals are everything in this film; there is no music, only words and moments of silence.

“The purpose of the film was to expose the overwhelming number of compromises that have destroyed the souls of the Romanian people during Ceausescu’s age. It is a story about decisions, responsibilities and choices in life, about solidarity and friendship in the context of those times,” says Cristian Mungiu, talking about his film.

It’s not a film about women, nor about men, it doesn’t concern only women, or only men, it’s about struggle and sacrifice, without being pathetic or exaggerated. You or the one next to you could face the same problems and we each deal with them in our own way. The winning point of the film is that it’s not judgemental about these choices, but only alarming, or purely descriptive.

“We’ll never speak of this again,” promise the two main characters at the end of Cristian Mungiu’s film. And although they are talking about an illegal abortion, the director tried to point out that their amnesia is in fact a collective amnesia of those who lived during the communist period and are now eager to move on quickly, without looking back.