4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
Sunday, February 03, 2008
4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
There is always a natural inertia when it comes to foreign movies, or rather movies in a language I do not understand. I can never get too involved in stories spoken in a different language, the emotional involvement being lost somewhere in between switching my attention from the actors to the subtitles and back. Nonetheless, the quality of some of the foreign movies cannot be denied, and that is certainly the case for this Romanian movie, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, a powerful tale set in the 1987 Romania under the communist rule. Of course, good movies like this one with a foreign language is never going to be imported into Singapore, which is why I took the liberty of downloading the film yesterday. Singapore imports foreign movies only if it has been nominated for the Oscars, and this film has been sadly overlooked by the academy despite winning the Palm D'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, the highest achievement for a film at that event. The MDA doesn't know what Palm D'Or is, so of course this film is not going to reach the shores of Singapore anytime soon.
There is always a natural inertia when it comes to foreign movies, or rather movies in a language I do not understand. I can never get too involved in stories spoken in a different language, the emotional involvement being lost somewhere in between switching my attention from the actors to the subtitles and back. Nonetheless, the quality of some of the foreign movies cannot be denied, and that is certainly the case for this Romanian movie, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, a powerful tale set in the 1987 Romania under the communist rule. Of course, good movies like this one with a foreign language is never going to be imported into Singapore, which is why I took the liberty of downloading the film yesterday. Singapore imports foreign movies only if it has been nominated for the Oscars, and this film has been sadly overlooked by the academy despite winning the Palm D'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, the highest achievement for a film at that event. The MDA doesn't know what Palm D'Or is, so of course this film is not going to reach the shores of Singapore anytime soon.4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a story about Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) , a polytechnic student in Romania, helping her roommate Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) to get an illegal abortion done by an underground doctor, Mr Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) at a risk of getting a five to ten year jail sentence if being arrested. Aside from keeping it absolutely secretive between the two of them, they had to find a hotel to stay in during the entire course of the surgery. Mr. Bebe isn't the nicest doctor in Romania either, and he proved to be quite a piece of work as the girls attempted to negotiate a price with him. Gabita is too scatterbrained to do anything for herself, which was why Otilia ended up paying the higher price for the operation to be done, going further than she should have to make the abortion a success.
This movie is not a walk in the park, for anybody out there thinking that it would be. Recent movies that come into mind when speaking of accidental pregnancy have been pretty light-hearted in nature and full of humor. Movies like Knocked Up and Juno attempted to give the audience a different perspective of accidental pregnancy, but neither of them elected the route of abortion, unlike this movie. Abortion itself is not a cheerful topic to talk about, much less film about. With that said, though, this film is not exactly a film about abortion either, nor is it about the suppression of women during the communist rule. We don't know why Gabita is pregnant in the film, how she got pregnant, or why Otilia was willing to make sacrifices for a friend who most obviously does not deserve that kind of friendship and loyalty. Director Cristian Mungiu elected not to give the audience a clear background story of the characters, but focused his attention on what is at hand and how to deal with the problems.
The film threads on the edge of safety and speaks of the potential consequences should the risks go ill, especially in a constrained society in Romania. This film delves deeply into the lives of the characters, especially Otilia who really is the main character here, rather than her pregnant friend Gabita. Not only did she have to be the one taking care of he bedridden friend, she also had to face up to her boyfriend's family members at a birthday party which she couldn't be bothered with. You see Otilia disintegrating throughout the whole film as the events unraveled and transpired, and by the end of the film you begin to pity Otilia, rather than Gabita who got herself into this mess in the first place.
I am not familiar with director Cristian Mungu's style of filming, but it is definitely a very unique one at that. He chose not to have any music for his film, not to have any professional lighting done on his set and chose to have some of his scenes filmed with a handheld camera, while others in long uninterrupted shots that mimicked the ones used in Children of Men and, more recently, a scene from Atonement. Though the handheld technique has grown in popularity as of late, the ones used in this film is hardly as distracting as the ones observed in Cloverfield. It is less nausea inducing, and it really helped the viewers to be within the situation as well, being right next to the characters and viewing the problem from their perspective. Choosing not to have lighting on the set also gave a higher level of realism to the film, despite the fact that some shots are completely darkened, especially towards the end of the movie.
I personally find the technique of filming long uninterrupted shots to be brilliant, but overusing it may cause the attention of the audience to stray. I am not sure why the director decided that it would be more effective to film how bored out Otilia was during the dinner scene for ten whole minutes, when the same message and meaning could have been brought forth in just five. Not only did some of the shots in this film take away the urgency of the story, but it also took away that momentum that built up from the beginning of the film. I found myself drifting away during those scenes, wanting the next part of the film to happen as soon as possible. I thought they were a little overdone, but I guess you cannot argue that the director did a brilliant job in most of the other long shots, which includes a disturbing shot on the dead fetus wrapped in a bloody white towel that seemed to last forever on screen.
I don't suppose this film is about whether or not it is right or wrong to abort a child. It does not delve in the heated debate of pro-life or pro-choice. Rather, this film is a raw and uncompromising view of such an act in a difficult time, and how the surgery can have adversed effects not just on the patient, but on the people around them as well. It was very disturbing to hear about the procedures being done, and keep in mind that we are not talking about a normal surgery done in a clinic, which can be done within just fifteen minutes. Everything has to be done quietly and in a secluded place, and it was hard to listen to how Mr Bebe instructed Otilia to not bury the dead fetus, but throw him down the rubbish chute of a ten-story building, in case anybody finds the body and traces it back to Gabita. It was hard to stomach how easy it was to dispose of a life, just taking it away with a probe stuck up the vagina and then just stuffing the body into a handbag before throwing it away like a bag of trash. It was disturbing, but I guess a film about abortion shouldn't be anything otherwise.
There is always a level of disbelief when it comes to Hollywood actors and actresses being involved in everyday struggles. I mean, seeing Katherine Heigl pregnant on screen in Knocked Up was a long stretch to convince the viewers that such things do happen. Director Cristian Mungiu chose relatively unknown actresses for the two lead roles, faces that we have never seen before - and possible never again. As a reviewer on another website mentioned, the actresses sold the circumstances, and did a great job in expressing the struggles involved in a time like this with such a delicate operation at hand. Vlad Ivanov also gave a chilling performance as the emotionless doctor who cannot be more of a pain in the ass.
This film, along with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, has been hailed as some of the best foreign movie last year. However, both movies were overlooked in the foreign language film category in the upcoming Oscars, which caused quite an uproar in the film community around the world. Nonetheless, this film should still be widely distributed and watched by people around the world, simply because of what it has to say and how it tells the story. A very good film, a cautionary tale of sorts, and definitely not a joyride for those who cannot stomach the subject very well. It is a depressing movie that does not provide any comfort whatsoever, so don't expect to enjoy it on a Sunday afternoon.
8.5/10
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on Sunday, February 03, 2008 at 3:03 PM.
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