Left Field Cinema

Set in a town in Romania towards the end of the 1980’s and the Communist Regime, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (henceforth 4 Months) is the second feature film from Romanian director Christian Mungiu. Centred around the events of an illegal abortion, the film is a bleak and emotionally unrelenting slice of loosely-stylised naturalism and has found wind spread notoriety, nominated for and ultimately winning many international awards, most notably achieving the Palme D’or in 2007 (Yeah, I guess I’m a little late).

There are very few senses in which 4 Months is an easy film to watch; its content is a contentious issue separate even from its portrayal, and the realism and honesty with which the film is constructed, both narrative-thematically and cinematically, inevitably lead to an ethical interplay with the audience allowing them to interpose their own thematic elements, reconciling to themselves the effect of story with very little traditional narrative structure. In fact this interposition of moral concepts is a necessity for 4 Months; it resolutely refuses the ivory-tower moralising it may be not unreasonable to expect from a film that is centred upon an illegal abortion. But this interposition is not left to subjective chance on the part of the audience. By saying that 4 Months does not moralise itself, that is not to say that it sets itself up merely as a portrayal of an event, an objective canvas for the subjective moralising of its audience. I believe 4 Months to be a much more subtle piece than that, because I do not believe 4 Months is strictly about abortion or similar moral issues. Mungiu does not ask ‘What is Right?’ but rather, ‘What does it mean to be (or at least, believe yourself to be) right?’

This theme is masterly revealed in the films cinematic decisions. Whilst its naturalism may be put down to a trend in higher-brow European cinema, I see this as one of the few films that not only finds the naturalistic theme beneficial, but in fact necessary for its effectiveness. This fact is captured most relevantly in the bedroom scene in which Mr. Bebe, Gabita and Otilia are discussing the abortion. Formally during this scene we have the height of realism: physiological cinematography (my own little neologism, by which I mean cinema-work that in no way contradicts biological seeing. For example, the rejection of jump cuts, zooms, shifts in focus etc.) and exclusively diegetic sound combine with available (or, ostensibly available) lighting effects in a fifteen minute sequence comprised of around 5 or 6 shots: a magnanimity toward the characters that is, in the works of Tarr, McQueen (just because of Werckmeister Harmonies and the mesmerising scene from Hunger having both been re-watched recently) and others, fortunately returning to vogue.

What is masterfully done within these formal grounds is the transition between a sympathetic relation with the protagonists, merely from their screen-time and invidious situation, to an empathic one. This is due predominantly to a fantastic screen-play and by a stand out performance from Anamaria Marinca as Otilia. In the attempt to complete this procedure, a procedure derived necessary from principles concerning the characters ideas of the ‘right’ life, it is revealed to us that chance, mistakes, accidents and lies have blighted our protagonists again and again, and, in the form of Mr.Bebe they are to be exposed to the harshest of absurdities. Here 4 Months really finds its real footing, because within this relentless and harrowing realism, we have found empathic centres that are not revealed to us through narrative schemas or formal clichés (great rising strings at the moment the principles are most profoundly avowed, or something equally tawdry), but simply through the humanity of the protagonists. White lies and errors usurp us all, this is our naturally fallibility, and even the most mundane of our principled actions can be derailed through this. Here, we find this notion, a notion we perhaps associate more with ourselves than any others, taken to its emotional pinnacle in a natural and realistic surrounding. This is true of almost all the scenes; later we see Otilia rebuffed by her callous and incredibly short-sighted boyfriend for her propensity to attempt too much, to please too many people. She is a victim of her own goodwill, of the basic principles of her humanity.

To say the film was a hopeful film would be perverse, but I do believe that it is not without hope. It does invite moralising over its central topic, but this is merely a side-effect of its truly poignant fundamental message. The physiology of the cinematic decisions, coupled with a strong screenplay and a gorgeously controlled and sustained performance from Marinca turn Mungiu’s potentially nihilistic film into one that I believe to be fundamentally humanistic. It truly asks ‘What does it mean to be right?’ and answers with a subtle decisiveness. It is to retain the right through the fallibility inevitable in humanity, and to live amidst but through absurdity and despair, through Mr. Bede. 4 Months is distressing and at times difficult to watch, but I think it is also empowering in its revelations concerning the paradoxes inherent in the process of merely living.

Ben Conway