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LATE-TERM TRAUMA: Anamaria Marinca
by MATTHEW HAYS
Cristian Mungiu makes one thing perfectly clear as he settles in for another interview about his Cannes award-winning feature, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. This movie is not a film about abortion. “This is a misperception about my film,” he says, on the line from his home in Romania. “When I sat down to write it, I wasn’t setting out to make a film about abortion.”
He could have fooled us. Even if 4 Months is not meant as a PSA about the issue, it does provide the film’s narrative thrust. Set in ’80s Romania during Ceausescu’s brutal reign, Mungiu’s story has one anguished young woman (played brilliantly by Anamaria Marinca) trying desperately to help her college roommate (Laura Vasiliu) to get a late-term abortion. Romania had strict laws on the books prohibiting it and any form of contraception, so in order to follow through with the task, the two women must involve themselves with a seedy underground abortion provider. It’s an unbelievably intense film, recalling the gritty Italian neo-realist films of the late ’40s.
But Mungiu says he tries to keep his influences narrowed down to one thing: reality. “I see no films at all for the year or two that I’m making a film. I like to keep things minimalist, not spectacular. I feel that my films should be about life, not about other films. I like to think that I present the kind of complexity we see in life and put it on the screen. A film shouldn’t speak about one thing, it can speak about many things.”
4 Months has set off strong critical reactions, gaining accolades for its strong performances and harrowing plot twists. “People have interpreted the film in many ways. Some have seen it as a film about freedom and communism. Some see it about the social classism that existed under communism. Many see it as being about abortion, of course. For me, it’s about responsibilities, friendship and solidarity. What is surprising in many ways is that some people have seen it as a pro-choice movie while others have seen it as an anti-abortion movie, depending on their perspective.”
Baby boom by decree
Ironically, Mungiu says he sees himself as part of a product of Ceausescu’s strict law on abortion, first enacted in 1966. This led to a massive baby boom in Romania—which was part of the dictator’s plan. “He was a megalomaniac,” says Mungiu. “Classrooms went from about 20 students to well over 40. Our generation was called the children of the decree.”
And Mungiu, who was born in ’68, says this led to a certain solidarity between members of this generation. “There was a woman I met who had this haunting story about her friend’s abortion, something that happened to her 15 years ago. I decided that I had to make a film inspired by this story, a tribute to this generation.”
Mungiu’s film, and its win of the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes, is part of what has been dubbed the Romanian New Wave, a brash new spate of films from the struggling former Eastern bloc nation. Mungiu acknowledges that he and his fellow Romanian filmmakers owe a certain debt to the neo-realists, but argues that they were reacting against something more than anything else. “Romanian films of the ’80s were quite metaphysical and unbelievable. They were cheesy in many cases. People from elsewhere would see them and think that that’s what Romania and Romanians were like. But we weren’t seeing anything that resembled us. No one talks like they did in those movies. I always felt that I could make a story way better than these people could.”
Also true to life—and hearkening back to the neo-realists—is 4 Months’ decidedly ambiguous ending. Without giving anything away, Mungiu manages to leave questions about the fate of our two protagonists, something that’s refreshingly complex and open-ended. “I liked the idea of leaving a lot of the questions that are raised in the film not being answered. I don’t like filmmaking that has all the answers. It’s the film that stops, not the story. Even fictional characters have more to them than what you see. When you go to sleep tonight, you won’t have all the answers to the questions that have been raised today.”
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
opens this Friday, Oct. 26
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