The circle of cinematically fruitful countries is small. Every few years, another contender is welcomed into the family of film nations, with the newest member being Romania.
Romanian filmmaking made its first international splash with Cristi Puiu's acclaimed "The Death of Mister Lazarescu," which topped many critics' polls in 2006, before reaching new heights with Cristian Mungiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days." Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, recipient of hushed hosannas from numerous film critics, "4 Months" is a brilliant calling card for a nascent national cinema suddenly among the world's most luminous, and a filmmaker whose austerity and preoccupation with the plight of women has broached comparisons to Robert Bresson and the Dardenne brothers.
"4 Months" is set in the Communist Romania of 1987, just two years before the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu; but this is cold comfort to Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), two students whose nightmarish plight is nothing more than ordinary life under Communism. Mungiu's film is discreet about its intentions, thrusting us headlong into its narrative with little explanation, leaving us to acclimate ourselves to a world not our own. Out of respect for its intentions, we'll be discreet too, and leave the plot summary minimal, for "4 Months" is a film best experienced unprepared.
Earlier this month, we spoke by telephone with Mungiu, 39, from Los Angeles, where he was promoting "4 Months."
Q.How did you come to filmmaking?
A. When I was 14, 16, I started watching lots of films. I was watching the very strange films of the period - the Romanian films that were very strange, very propagandistic, and the reaction they provoked in me is "I can do way better than this, and this is not how stories should look." I knew from the beginning that it was not going to be possible, or it would be very unlikely, for me to become a film director during the Communist era. Finally, with the fall of Communism in 1989, I moved to Bucharest and studied film.
Q.How did you find the actresses for the movie? The movie lives or dies based on their abilities, and Anamaria Marinca in particular is exceptional.
A.Everything seems easy when you see the film, but it was a very complicated process. My first idea was I need girls of 19, because this was the original age of the girls that told me the story. I was first auditioning lots of girls this age who were students of acting in Romania, just to discover that I couldn't find anyone that I trusted enough. Then I expanded this age limit, and I ended up having a couple of girls of 28. I knew Laura Vasiliu because we were working on some commercials before. And I knew Anamaria Marinca. She was on my short list of people to see from the beginning. The transformation that she is capable of - from what she is in real life to what she is when you ask her to be in character - is unbelievable for me.
Q.So the film is based on the real experiences of women during the Ceausescu era?
A.The film is based on one very true story that is very close to what you see in the film. It's a personal history of this girl that I knew quite well, and she told me this story some 15 years ago. I never thought I'm going to make a film out of it ever, but [in 2006], when I was looking for a relevant story from my 20s, we ran into each other. And I was telling her that I was trying to write about our 20s, and somehow this came back in conversation.
Q.The ending of the film is extremely moving, in its bleakness and its haunting power, but also offers a sentiment of forgetting expressly violated by the film itself. Is your film a refusal to let the horrors of the Communist era - especially those visited on women - be forgotten?
A.The conclusion lies for me in this line: You can't pretend that these things haven't happened. You can't pretend that you were not hurt. And what really happened after we decided to make this film - and this was our greatest surprise - was to discover that what was a personal story for me and this girl was pretty much a personal story for everyone our age, or older. All of a sudden, the film served the peculiar social purpose of encouraging people to speak about something that was very taboo for a long period. I don't think you can pass over a period like this, and the healing process of talking about this is absolutely necessary.
Q.On watching the film again, I was struck by the seemingly unnecessary scenes toward the beginning of the film - where a stranger gives Otilia a bus ticket so she can avoid the ticket inspector, and where Don Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) visits his mother. There seems to be a common duty for the characters in this film to help each other, even at their own expense. Is the missing element in this equation the shared unseen, unmentioned enemy - the government?
A.It's not that precise, but there is something close to what you say. What I wanted to reveal was that people were much more capable of solidarity whenever there's a common enemy. Whenever there's a common enemy, two things happen: There's a solidarity among people which are close to each other, and the other thing that happened is that if the system is abusive toward individuals, individuals at the same time will tend to be abusive toward one another if they don't know each other well. These two things together were characteristics of the Communist times. A conclusion of living then was, if they screw me all the time, I have the freedom to take advantage of whomever I can whenever I can, because this is how life goes. All of the film is set in 1987 - it's true to remember that we had no idea that Communism is close to an ending.
Q.How did Romanians respond to your victory at Cannes? I heard you received a medal from the president.
A. (laughs) It was way more popular than I ever expected. Because we were considered favorites in Cannes, there was a lot of press, and a lot of coverage, and it was so popular in Romania that in a very strange way this award was more important for lots of people than the film [itself]. It kind of suffocated the social purpose that I hoped the film would have in Romania. People were just very very glad, and behaved as if we got the World Cup in football . . . But right after Cannes, which is to say from people who hadn't seen the film, all of a sudden, the film was not that important, [yet] what it managed to achieve was very important, which was very strange for me. The best part that happened to us was that later on, this was followed by a very good reaction from the audience, which was much more important for us. Most of the people aged 40, or more than 40, were very touched by the film.
