Coming hard on the heels of last year’s heralded The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, the mesmerizing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days represents another outstanding offering from Romania, a country in the throes of a cinematic renaissance. The winner of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days has been shut out of this year’s Oscar race for Best Foreign Film, a snub that has prompted critics and filmgoers alike to label this year’s award show as a fraudulent sham.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days takes place in Bucharest sometime in the mid-1980s. Choking beneath the stranglehold of Nicolae Ceaucescu’s communist dictatorship, Romania is shown as a country crumbling to dust before our very eyes, a rotting nation where both the buildings and the land on which they sit are in a state of cold, lifeless decay and infertility. The national infrastructure has all but collapsed. Only the black market thrives, controlling the dissemination of everything from cigarettes and personal hygiene items to illegal abortions.
University student Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) is in trouble. Young and unmarried, she is nearly five months into a pregnancy that is sure to ruin any chance of a career in the harshly regulated society. Timid to the point of paralysis, the uncertain Gabita turns to her roommate, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) for help. While the terrified Gabita hides in the shadows, the worldly-wise Otilia connects with Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), a black market doctor who alternates shockingly between monstrosity and delicate kindness. In the hotel room where they have arranged for the abortion to take place, Bebe blackmails both girls, leading Otilia to make a dreadful sacrifice for her friend. Once events are set in motion, Gabita’s life hangs in the fragile balance even as the child inside of her comes to the end of his.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days takes place over a span of roughly 24 hours, yet it feels almost as if we are witnessing events in real time. Director Cristian Mungiu uses extremely long, unbroken, static takes and unflinching close-ups, a documentary style that gives the film an almost unbearable sense of realism. So perfect are the performances that at no point do we believe we are watching actors. We feel like flies on the wall, voyeurs witnessing a tragic slice of all-too-real life.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is not for the faint of heart. Excruciatingly intense and as gripping as a thriller, the film follows Hitchcockian rules of ratcheting tension. You watch with a palpable sense of dread and leave the theater utterly exhausted, your stomach tied in knots. Yet, despite its foreboding premise, the film holds our emotions at arm’s length, always preferring the clinical to the sensational.
What is most surprising is that the film’s focus is not with the pregnant victim, Gabita, but with her long-suffering friend, Otilia. This is a story of friendship and sacrifice as much as it is a scathing, highly politicized critique of the Eastern Block. Mungiu, who grew up under Communism and based the film on the experience of friends, has crafted a world in which imminent tragedy lurks around every corner for the powerless victims of a draconian regime. Survival in such circumstances comes only when one person is willing to sacrifice everything for another. All actions, be they for good or ill, have palpable consequences and no one comes away unbloodied.
© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.
