4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (2007) Reviews

• Absolutely brilliant

  harry_tk_yung2008-03-11

  Rarely do we see a film so absorbing that offers no humour, no romance, no suspense (in the normal sense), little dramatic action and no challenge of controversial values (at least not explicitly). The latest Cannes Palm D'Or winner "4 months" is just such a one. You will not be "entertained" in the normal sense. Most will come out feeling depressed. But there is also a sense of elation in being privileged to a piece of art work that deserved to be described as nothing less than brilliant. The plot is simple. In a time span of less than 24 hours, the audience witness and experience a chillingly realistic abortion. Without ceremony or preliminaries, the camera takes the audience right into a crummy apartment in 1987 Romania occupied by two students, where Gabita is packing to spend a few days in a hotel for an abortion while Otilia is helping her. However, this is really Otilia's story. In the next little while, we see her scrambling when the hotel booking falls through, having an argument with her boyfriend who wants her to come to his mother's birthday dinner in the evening and making initial contact with the man who will perform the abortion for her friend Gabita. The rest of the story takes place in the hotel where the abortion is performed and Otilia's boyfriend's place where she spends an hour to attend the birthday dinner. Of the four characters, the boyfriend has been designed to be common and unimpressive. The man performing the abortion is no doubt a villain but comes across more as unscrupulously self-serving and utilitarian and rather than outright evil. It is in Gabita that we have an unusual type of "villain", one that you may end up detesting even more than Anton Chigurh in "No country for old men". In Gabita is the description "clueless" redefined – utmost irresponsibility, endless procrastination, lying for convenience (an illusion of an easy-way-out). All this doesn't really matter as you start to lose patience with and cares less and less for this character, until you see that as a result, what Otilia has to go through in unflinching loyalty to her friend refining the word "hero" (a word, incidentally, that doesn't need any and gender differentiation). In today's Hollywood trend of film shooting, editing and cutting that leaves your head spinning and completely empty afterwards, the camera work of "4 months" is beautifully refreshing. At the start, there are some long shots covering physically moving scenes, giving you a realistic experience of being right there at the scene rather than watching at a distance. Wisely, these are not overused. There are also stationary shots reminiscent of Yasujiro Ozu. One particularly brilliant scene is at the dinner table where Otilia is positioned right at the centre of the frame, with her boyfriend and his parents beside her, as if you are one of the dinner guests looking across the dinner table. For full ten minutes the camera is completely stationary, as the animated conversion goes on around her and is sometimes directed at her eliciting brief, polite responses. With model minimalism, Anamaria Marinca conveys, pitch-perfect, Otilia's uneasiness in this less-than-desirable company, her growing anxiety thinking about her friend left alone in the hotel room waiting for the abortion device implanted by the "doctor" to take effect, the surfacing frustration with her relationship with her boyfriend and a whole range of layers of emotions – full ten minutes at the dead centre of an uncompromising camera. Just for these ten minutes, she should win an Oscar. "4 month" does not have any background music (same as "No country for old men") and the life drama plays out naturally without any dramatization. Yet the palpable underlying tension makes you hold your breath. I don't recall a 90% full cinema ever being so quiet, particularly when there are long moments of complete silence on the screen, when you can hear a pin drop. The audience is so captivated that they hardly breath. "4 months" does not preach. It is not a morality debate about abortion. What it shows mercilessly (to the audience, including the image of a jettisoned fetus at 4 months 3 weeks and 2 days) the brutal reality two young women faced in totalitarian Romania in the 1980s, in trying to get an illegal abortion as well as in daily life. One of the most deserved Cannes' winners in recent years.

• Less is sometimes better...

  loco_732007-11-10

  A visceral and emotionally draining experience. Those are not typical superlatives one usually conjures while commenting on a movie, yet in this case I dare use such a characterization as a positive rendering of what I felt when watching this film. The spartan and minimalist style of the movie only adds to its potency. Though many might find it jarring to sit through, I can only hope that people will have the patience and resolve to watch this brilliant example of movie making. If you invest your time and emotions in this one, you will not be disappointed. The acting, camera work, cinematography are of the highest quality, especially given the budgetary restrictions and scarcity of available resources.This movie is yet more ample proof that one does not necessarily need a 200 million dollar budget to make a great film. Creativity and originality can add untold dimensions to any physical limitations and barriers. All in all a great "little" movie about a forgotten slice of history, a little known place and, a time of horrifying brutality and oppression i.e. the so-called Golden Age (epoca de aur), Romania and Nicolae Ceausescu. This movie, "4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile/4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" is the first installment in a proposed trilogy entitled "Amintiri din epoca de aur/Tales From The Golden Age". I'm looking forward to the next chapters...

• A Communist Country on the Eve of Freedom

  d_dobrev612008-02-08

  I have read many reviews about this particular movie but I had the chance to watch it only yesterday. Since I am a citizen of a neighboring ex-communist country - Bulgaria - I am well familiar with the essence of the communist regimes at the end of their existence. The were not so cruel like in the 50-s and the 60-s, it was more a farce than a real, normal life and society. Everybody, except the old "loyal" and thickheaded communists, had lost their faith in the "bright future" long ago, but also everybody pretended to be loyal to the party-state for pure selfish reasons. It is shown very well in the movie where, in this "the best of all possible societies", the ordinary people make their shopping mainly at the black market, where they have to do a simple medical procedure illegally, and at the cost of fear and humiliation. This atmosphere becomes grimmer with the dirty streets and the old jalopies, with the rude receptionists and the corrupt people all over the city, with the stupid indifference of the boy's parents and their friends - the so called "elite" in this eliteless society. I am sure the movie will not be properly understood by the citizens of the free countries who had only heard about communism but had never experienced it. Nevertheless it is worth seeing and I am very glad that such films, together with "The Lives of Others" (Das Leben Der Anderen), have won prestige international awards.

• the end of the transition for Romanian cinema

  dromasca2007-12-24

  Cristian Mungiu's film is the most successful in what is called the Romanian Cinama New Wave, although it's not the very best in my opinion. I liked more 'The Death of Dante Lazarescu', and even 'California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit') had better chances from start. And yet '4-3-2' succeeded better than other because it vibrates different chords in the viewers souls and on different planes. Women will resonate with the story of the imposed tragedy at a personal and national level resulted from the anti-abortion policies in Communist Romania, and one cannot say it's only a pro-choice movie, it's a real indictment. If one is interested in recent European history he may see the results of what communist propaganda named the Golden Age, an apocalyptic landscape of cold, dark and loneliness. If you are Romanian and lived these times you may feel you returned in time and the end of the movie may seem the awakening from a recurring nightmare. And if you are a fan of good cinema you will admire the virtuosity of a director who learned perfectly the lessons of Jim Jarmusch and DOGMA and transfered them in the East European space. You need the hand of a master to create those those long shots in which every detail is in place, camera, actors, lights and voices. I see from time to time older Romanian movies where I observe not that much the lack of technical means in the 70s or 80s, but more the lack of capacity of the directors to compensate this disadvantages with simplicity of concept and turn them into quality as other directors from less privileged schools of cinema have done. Well, the last films of directors like Mungiu or the late Nemescu I could see a jump ahead in quality of expression that takes many generations for other film schools. There are many memorable scenes in this film. One of them describes a family dinner, where the principal character, a student from a lesser means family arrives invited by her boyfriend. It's his mother's birthday, and they have as guests two couples of friends from the local mid-upper class. The scene is a nine minute shot with fixed camera, focusing on four characters sited at the head of the table, with a few others voices being heard from out of the screen space. She is in the middle, and obliged to listen and participate, but she wants to be some other place, near her friend who just underwent an illegal abortion. Every minute may be fatal for the life of her friend. The dialog is not meaningless, it is a short novella on its own about the art of compromise necessary for survival in a dictatorship. And yet, she is there and is not there - all looks like a Da Vinci painting, with Jesus sited among the apostles, but already in a different spiritual reality. Magnificent to follow as its character has its own life, its like a concatenation of first plans one near the other. In another memorable scene Otilia runs in the night to get rid of the aborted child. It's one of these long and cold nights into which Romania was plunged at these times because of electricity savings. She runs on the streets scared, scared not that much by the shades of the night but by the proof of the 'crime' she is carrying and which can incriminate her for many years of jail if she is caught. Best horror scene of the year in my view. Anamaria Marinca is superb in the role of Otilia. No mannerism, no melodrama, no make-up - the actress is just living the character of a girl ready to sacrifice everything to help her naive and maybe a little dumb friend. It is by this humanity of the simple people that dictatorship can be survived at the human level the film seems to say. '4-3-2' is a candidate for the best foreign film at the Oscars, but I am afraid it will not get the prize. The film starts slowly and needs patience to get the sense, and many jurors may not get over the first third. The interest for East-European cinema is decreasing, it's not such a new thing any longer, and Romanian cinema is little known out of Europe. Anyway, Oscar or not, this film is simply good, and it demonstrates that the Romanian cinema passed the period of transition and it's time for maturity. It's now even harder, as Romanian directors will need to find the inspiration to make films that do not look that much into the past but still can catch the interest of the local and international audiences. It will be interesting to follow.

• A path to maturity

  che_cosmin2007-09-20

  Usually, movies are about entertainment, or about art, or simply they just have something to say. This is exactly the case with "4,3,2". Going beyond exceptional cinematography, this is a movie about serious problems, in a serious approach. It's about those extraordinary events in our every day life. The cast and all the effort put into making it add up to the success of presenting a story about real life with fictional means. It's not a movie 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 me, 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. Great acting, great directing, great filming, great writing and a great story make this film well worthy of those Palmes D'Or. It's a great achievement for cinematography in general, not only the Romanian one in particular. But for a more detailed perspective, just go see the movie!